


Start the Clocks and Never Touch Them

by nimmieamee (orphan_account)



Category: Captain America (2011), Marvel (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Time Travel, WIP
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-11-01
Updated: 2013-02-10
Packaged: 2017-10-25 14:31:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 35,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/271326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/nimmieamee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Accidental teleportation, Tony decided. It was the only possible explanation. It was a relief, really. It meant he hadn’t been fighting with Steve, and it meant he had a cool new angle for research if he could just pinpoint the trigger. Really, he just had to get back to the lab and secure his boyfriend and figure out where he’d gone wrong and –</p><p>And he rounded the corner and walked straight into some sort of mob hit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> From a capkink prompt: Tony is living happily with Steve in modern day times until he is thrown into the past. However, he doesn't end up seeing a Steve that he is used to but instead pre-serum Steve. Still in love with him, he somehow has to work out a way to not be a giant stalker while trying to get noticed by the person he loves. He also can't reveal what happens in the future (or that he has a battery in his chest), while trying to get back. Extra points if Tony saves Steve in a fight.
> 
> Title is from James Thurber's _The 13 Clocks_ , where the only Golux in the world explains that, "If you can touch the clocks and never start them, then you can start the clocks and never touch them. That's logic, as I know and use it."

As far as explosions went, Tony’s lab had seen worse. Messing around with arc reactors and electromagnetic pulse generators sometimes left more than its fair share of smoke, and just because the smoke was red this time didn’t make it any more impressive. Tony made a brief mental note to figure out what was up with that particular shade of crimson before he apparently inhaled too much of it and blacked out.

He was wet when he woke up, and his first thought was that it had taken way too long for the sprinklers to come on, and his second thought was that he’d had Jarvis disable the sprinklers after they kept on messing with his attempts to upgrade the suit’s repulsor rays, and his third thought was that it was raining on his face.

Tony raised himself up on his elbows. He was lying in a puddle, and someone in a shabby drape suit was vomiting into a trashcan a few feet to his left. A wrought-iron door grille clanged open in front of him, and a stout man in a graying apron tossed some wooden crates at Tony’s feet. Nearby, someone was cursing very loudly, and someone else was grunting, and a third someone was speaking rapid-fire Italian, and several cars were honking in a clear staccato pattern.

Tony kicked at the crates to dislodge them from his $38,000 Amadeo Testonis, and stood. As far as wakeups went, this one wasn’t particularly alarming; Tony was a sometime-drunk (or a survivor who, like countless Americans, courageously waged a daily battle against the demons of alcoholism, if you listened to that quack publicist who kept calling Pepper and threatening to quit) and a sometime-womanizer, which meant that, unless he woke up a) in a seedy Twin Cities nightclub back room with b) Congresswoman Jacobson underneath him and c) her potentially-underage adoptive supermodel-of-a -granddaughter Ekaterina on top of him and d) coated entirely in a fluffy white substance that he shouldn’t taste because it was absolutely not whipped cream, this was probably not going to be the worst day of his life. The vomiting man, who smelled remarkably like cheap rye whiskey but was probably still several leagues behind Tony in the “Drink, Make Bad Choices, Drink Some More” game of life, turned a bleary eye in Tony’s direction and then quickly looked away.

“Carbohydrates,” Tony told him. “Drugs. Then another drink.” This was objectively bad advice and Tony knew it, but, in terms of cataloguing the greatest hangover cures known to man, it was the best counsel Tony could offer. With this public service performed, Tony made his way around the trashcans and through a narrow alley hemmed in by red brick on either side. A small sliver of worry began to tug at his thoughts, which were surprisingly not-at-all alcohol-clouded.

The thing was, Tony had very little reason to wake up soaking wet in an alleyway these days. Pepper would have said that he’d never had a reason to begin with, but that was just because she’d never accepted “thinking about my father again,” “I needed that extra drink – no, seriously, without it I was going to die,” and “I was bored” as valid reasons. He was rarely bored anymore; Steve and the Avengers took care of that. He was no longer going to die, thanks to the vibranium that powered his armor (and comprised Steve’s shield). And he rarely thought about his father, except for those moments when Steve began a sentence with “You know, Howard once told me that—“ and then bit his lip, remembering that those sentences were best left unfinished.

So that left one reason for him to get drunk enough that he ended up in a filthy back alley with no recollection of how he got there: Steve.

But that made no sense. He and Steve couldn’t have had a fight. Things were going well. Like, super-serum-enhanced-sex-drive well. I-don’t-even-mind-that-Thor-clearly-thinks-I’m-your-concubine-or-something well. Let’s-beat-up-the-Masters-of-Evil-and-then-make-out-for-a-while well. At the very least, Tony had assumed they were at the level of sure-I’ll-stop-drinking-and-I-really-mean-it-this-time-no-honestly well.

Maybe Steve had accidentally finished one of those sentences about Howard Stark. Or maybe Tony had been the one to fuck up, which was more likely. Maybe Tony should call and apologize, either way, because maybe he didn’t want to lose Steve even if Steve had been the fuck-up and Tony had wonderfully, improbably been in the right.

Tony reached into his right pocket for his phone, but it wasn’t there. It wasn’t in his left pocket, either, and neither was it in his back pocket. He last remembered leaving it on one of the worktables in the lab, just a few minutes before the explosion with the red smoke, but...

Accidental teleportation, Tony decided. It was the only possible explanation. It was a relief, really. It meant he hadn’t been fighting with Steve, and it meant he had a cool new angle for research if he could just pinpoint the trigger. Really, he just had to get back to the lab and secure his boyfriend and figure out where he’d gone wrong and –

And he rounded the corner and walked straight into some sort of mob hit.

At least, that’s what Tony thought it was at first, because what else could it be if four oversized thugs were intent on beating the crap out of one defenseless guy? Crooked cops didn’t need to band together like that because they had the state on their side, small-time types didn’t have that much muscle, and any villains bigger than the mob usually attacked with magic or superpowers or fantastic space weaponry or radioactively-enhanced extra limbs or all of the above. This was just a few goons beating on a little guy in an alley.

Whoever these guys were, four against one wasn’t fair, and Tony wasn’t having it. He pulled the biggest one off and decked him, sending him crashing into a heap of crates right at the mouth of the alley. Then he turned around and faced two more, who came barreling at him while the last one contented himself with the little guy. Tony got one with a jab to the larynx and the other with a left hook, and then the first one came back for more and Tony noticed the swastika armbands.

Well, that was just tacky.

Evidently the little guy thought so too. Out of the corner of his eye, Tony saw him twist just out of reach and hold up one broken side of a wooden crate as a shield. This was a bad plan and would probably result in a splinter to the eye, so Tony helped him out by reaching back and punching the last tormentor so hard he careened into the alley wall, and then he seized another piece of crate and broke it over the first one’s head, knocking him out cold. The ones left standing spat something at him and took off, and Tony silently thanked Steve for all those sober lessons in hand-to-hand and Happy for all those semi-inebriated boxing sessions. Not that the latter had prepared him for fighting back-alley Nazis or anything, but it wasn’t like Tony had been completely helpless before he’d met Steve. Even putting aside all of his skill with a super-powered robot suit, he’d actually done pretty well for himself in the area of not losing horribly to his personal assistant.

From behind Tony, the little guy cleared his throat.

“Oh,” Tony said, holding up a hand. “Don’t thank me. It’s fine.”

“I had it under control,” said the guy who would have been some crushed bones and an untidy red splatter on the pavement if it weren’t for Tony. Something about his voice, surprisingly deep for such a scrawny guy, was familiar, but Tony wasn’t going to focus on that when faced with such a complete lie and such utter denial of his heroism.

“Oh, okay,” Tony said quickly. “It’s not like I saved your life or anything.”

“I wasn’t having such a hard t—“ the guy began, an irritated cadence slipping into his tone that put Tony in mind of Steve’s Brooklyn accent.

“No, of course, skip on the thanks,” Tony said. “You were doing so well against those wannabe Nazi mobsters—“

“Fritz Kuhn’s boys. The German American Bund.”

“Excuse me, I don’t know them personally,” Tony said. “Special friends of yours? Next time I’ll leave you to it. I hate to break up a party.”

“I didn’t ask for a rescue.”

“Well, I’m the guy that gives them,” Tony said. “Friendly neighborhood Iron Man, champion of the ungrateful.” With that, he made his way to the mouth of alley, leaving his thoroughly unappreciative companion to mutter something about drunks, which was fair enough, Tony supposed.

When he reached the street, Tony stopped cold. Something was off. Possibly it was the cars, which were Auburn Cabriolets and Nash Coupes and 12-cylinder Lincoln Zephyrs – enormous, lumbering, antique monstrosities of the kind one kept in the garage to dissect the engineering of bygone days or to impress attractive female steampunk enthusiasts, or to really hammer home how superior one’s own sleek designs were by comparison. Possibly it was the pair of passing girls, whose hemlines were so long that Tony briefly wondered if they were Amish, before noting their bright red lips and immaculate makeup. Possibly it was the weedy young man hawking newspapers for five cents each. Or possibly it was the men in flannel and suspenders who were painting over the “L” on an advertisement on the building opposite the alley. The advertisement now read, “--adies, Stay Fit And Slim for 1941 By Taking Bile Beans.”

Fuck. Not teleportation, then.

_Time travel._

“Hey,” Tony said to the man with the newspapers, “Give me one. “ He reached into his pocket and brought out his wallet, which contained something like five useless credit cards and a few equally useless debit cards and wads of cash with oversized presidential heads and all sorts of anti-counterfeiting maneuvers and a print date that was definitely too far in the future to make any of that matter. Finally, he located a nickel and handed it off to the young man, glancing briefly at the tiny, engraved “2002” on its face. He figured that, as long as he hadn’t landed in the era of nickels engraved with pictures of buffalo and the crying Indian, he’d be fine.

It seemed the Jefferson nickel had already been introduced; the man stared at it for a moment, pocketed it, and gave Tony a paper.

It was the _Brooklyn Eagle_ , a paper he’d never heard of before. The front-page story discussed the prospects for the coming world series, focusing largely on the Dodgers and complete with an editorial that promised hell for “those Crumbs, the Yankees.” The interior had a poorly-drawn caricature of Gene Kelly; an obituary for a dead department store owner; a notice regarding the re-dedication of a statue in Prospect Park commemorating the Battle of Long Island and something called the Dongan Oak; an obituary for a dead socialite; several articles expressing concern over slums in Brownsville; an announcement of the marriage of Mr. Laws of Pierrepont Street and a pretty blonde descendant of Ethan Allen; an obituary for a dead lawyer; photos of several attractive Brooklyn Junior League actresses; and advertisements for stockings, hickory girdles, Model 1 Remington typewriters, and, yes, even bile beans. Tucked away in one corner of the second-to-last page, there was also a short article about the German counteroffensive against the British in North Africa three days earlier; a tiny brief assuring citizens that entry into the war wasn’t assured; and an even tinier brief detailing the government’s seizure of all German, Italian, and Danish ships in local ports thanks to a military agreement with the British.

The paper was dated April 2nd, 1941.

Tony decided not to focus on the 1941 for the moment. Early April. So this all had to be a joke, right? April Fools: congrats, Happy, you got me. Or maybe it was Pepper or Rhodey, as they both had about ten million more reasons to play a really cruel prank on Tony. Maybe they’d roped Steve into it. This certainly seemed too elaborate and historically accurate for anyone to set up without Steve’s input, only…

No. This was a little too mean for Steve. It was a little too mean for any of them, to be honest.

Someone came out the alley behind Tony, brushing lightly against the back of his thin T-shirt. Tony wouldn’t even have noticed it, only suddenly it seemed too cold and he was feeling hyper-sensitive to everything and his chest hurt, and _he was in fucking 1941_. Tony whirled around and caught the bypasser’s sleeve. It was the man from the alley fight, sans his makeshift shield and swimming in a dirty, oversized khaki overcoat with traces of blood on the sleeve.

“Hold on,” Tony said. “Hold on just a second. Who was it? Was it Rhodey? Was it Coulson, that fucker?”

The man tried to shrug out of Tony’s grip, but he wasn’t strong enough to do so, and Tony went ahead and held on more firmly.

“Just tell me this is some joke,” Tony said quickly. “I think it’s very funny. I’m definitely not pissed off or freaking out right now. Are they paying you? I’ll double that.”

“Give it up, buddy,” said the man, showing no signs of giving up on being free of Tony himself. “There’s a mission down the street. Go clean up or something.” He tried to shove Tony off again and continue along his way, but Tony stepped in front of him, and that’s when he got a good look at the man.

It wasn’t Steve.

It _couldn’t_ be.

Steve didn’t have such a delicate, pointed jaw, or such a narrow, tired face. He wasn’t slight, and he didn’t have such thin shoulders, and he never disappeared inside his own clothes like this guy did. Steve wouldn’t try to twist out of Tony’s grip like that, and Steve definitely wouldn’t end up wheezing from the exertion of it. Steve wasn’t this frail. Steve wasn’t this short. Steve wasn’t this weak.

Only. He would have been. Back in 1941, anyway. Back before Project Rebirth.

“Steve…?” Tony said.

Steve’s eyes widened and he took a swing at Tony. It was a really crappy swing, and it wouldn’t have affected Tony even if it had any power behind it (which it didn’t, because where would this Steve get it from? He probably weighed less that Tony’s suit), only Tony was already in shock and so he stepped out of the way without thinking.

“Get lost. Leave me alone,” Steve said, although he didn’t push past Tony. He dropped into a crouch with his fists up, seemingly, improbably, ready for another fight.

Tony held his hands up.

“No,” he said. “No, no, no. No way. Steve.”

“I said to leave me alone,” Steve snapped.

“I do not want to fight right now,” Tony said. “Just listen for a sec—“

Someone grabbed Tony’s shoulder and spun him around, and Tony was suddenly looking up at an unshaven young man with cocky blue eyes.

“You don’t want a fight? Then don’t pick one, greaseball,” said the newcomer. Then his fist connected with Tony’s jaw and everything went black again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Warnings for offhand 1940s nationalistic bigoted comments and mention of racist early-20th century theater practices. Slightly less concerning warnings for vague technical descriptions that I will be happy to rewrite if it turns out I didn't make it vague enough to preclude any flaws in my super-basic, comic-book-y gibberish.
> 
> Also, Sergeant Sarah Brown and Edith Keeler are not mine. They're stolen from _Guys and Dolls_ and Star Trek's _The City on the Edge of Forever_ , respectively.

“Of course you didn’t pick the fight,” said Sergeant Sarah Brown, who was mousy-haired and pretty and chatty and who described herself as ‘a steadfast foot soldier in the Army of the Lord.’

“Bucky Barnes’s little friend picked the fight,” she continued, calmly wrapping Tony’s jaw in such a carefree and entirely ill-advised manner that Tony immediately became convinced she’d had no medical training whatsoever.

“I know who he is. You can just say his name,” Tony said distantly. It was 1941. _1941._ How the hell he going to get out of 1941?

Sergeant Brown poked him vindictively in the neck, and Tony yelped.

“Don’t you go after him, tough guy,” she said, resuming her ministry of Tony’s battered face. “What I don’t get is why every man in Brooklyn thinks he has something to prove. That’s what I don’t get.”

“They’re lost souls, Sergeant Brown,” said Lieutenant Edith Keeler, from where she was peeling potatoes for the Mission’s evening supper.

“His name is Steve Rogers,” said Tony, just to spite Sergeant Brown.

“What?” Sergeant Brown said, giving the bandage on Tony’s jaw a final, satisfied pat and making Tony wince in the process. “D’you expect a prize now? There’s no prize in beating up a little guy like that.”

“Or anyone, sergeant,” said Lieutenant Keeler. “Soldiers of the Lord abhor violence.”

“I don’t want to fight him,” Tony said. “Though it wouldn’t hurt to talk to him. Preferably without Bucky Barnes around.”

Lieutenant Keeler made a face. “While I share your reservations over Brother James –“

“He took her to Brighton Beach last year, but took Pearl Clifford to Coney a month later,” said Sergeant Brown in what was probably intended to be a whisper but somehow managed to carry across the room.

“ _The point is_ , Brother Anthony, that it doesn’t sound like it’s talking you’re after, if you want him alone. The Save-A-Soul Mission will not help you seek vengeance. Should you seek to give up the evils of the bottle, however—“

“Bottled evil?” Tony said. “When you put it like that, how can I resist?”

Lieutenant Keeler pursed her lips in annoyance, but Tony ignored it. He suspected that he’d be taking to the bottle rather liberally, if he didn’t get back to his own time soon. There had to be a decent lab somewhere in Brooklyn, or at least someplace with the tools to get him back home. Tony’s father’d had some dealings somewhere in central Brooklyn around this time, if Tony recalled correctly. They’d probably even make the paper, though he’d have to find something a little more authoritative than the _Daily Eagle_.

“Ladies, as much as I’ve appreciated this, I’ll be going now.”

“You’ll be back,” said Lieutenant Keeler. “Take a shirt from the hall closet. You’ll freeze in just that undershirt.”

“And consider shaving,” said Sergeant Brown, “You won’t get work looking like a bum. That scraggly beard makes you look foreign.”

“That’s not very Christian of you,” Tony said. “It’s a goatee.”

“It’s ugly,” said Lieutenant Keeler, “Go with the Lord.”

Tony gave her a mock-salute, grabbed a shirt as instructed, shrugged it over his t-shirt, and then backed out of the Mission’s front door and onto the stoop, where a number of actual bums were gathered, deliberately eschewing the task of dinner preparation but ready to descend inside whenever it became apparent that Lieutenant Keeler had set the tables. He almost walked straight past them, but then he thought better of it.

His first priority was getting back to Steve – his Steve. Provided he accomplished this, he might be willing to give up on his second priority, which was liquor. But he hadn’t lied to Lieutenant Keeler about wanting to talk to the other, smaller Steve Rogers, the one with the thin arms and the distrustful eyes. There was something stubborn and steady about the little guy whose own overcoat had swallowed him up, something persistent and solid and entirely _Cap_.

If…if this didn’t work out, and Tony had to pray that it _did_ , because he didn’t particularly like the thought of being stuck in 1941, then maybe Tony would forgo the bottled evil and pay this Steve a visit. Maybe.

“Steve Rogers,” Tony said, without preamble.

“The little shrimp from Canarsie?” said one of the bums. “The one who carried you here with his pal?”

“Nah,” said another. “He’s from Flatbush. I beat him up once. Bruises easy, like a kid from Flatbush.”

“I laid him flat in a real dive on Pacific Street once,” mused another. “Pretty sure he was living there at the time.”

“Yeah,” Tony said, “Well, if any of you touches him again, I’ll be the one laying people flat.”

“Sure, sure,” said the second one. “He’s all yours. Not much of a fight, though.”

“I don’t want to fight him,” Tony said again. He was starting to think that he didn’t like Brooklyn very much.

The bums stared blankly at Tony for a few moments, and then the third one offered, “His buddy Barnes is staying at the YMCA off Sixth Avenue. Bet you’d find them both there.”

“Great,” Tony said. He walked off without thanking them, past the Salvation Army storefront next door, down a side street full of skinny kids playing stickball and merchants packing up their stalls for the day, and onto a wide avenue crowded with men in smart hats rushing to and fro. There was another news-seller there, a real one with a stall and everything, not just a guy in a stupid cap with a few local papers under his arm. Tony parceled out another five cents and picked out the Wall Street Journal, which was both comfortingly similar to its modern counterpart and the only paper with no headlines expressing slavish devotion to the Dodgers.

He got halfway through the paper before he found it, on page 5 (really, page _5_? Tony, the grand disappointment, at least always made the front page, but, then, he’d never had to compete with the Brooklyn Dodgers).

 **STARK PULLS OUT OF VITAPHONE; FLATBUSH STUDIO CLOSES NEXT MONTH**

Beneath the headline, there was a small black-and-white photo of Howard Stark, inventor, investor, business magnate, engineer, philanthropist, aviator, and – for a brief moment in time – film producer. He had thicker, darker hair than the Howard Stark Tony had known, and was wearing white pleated trousers and a truly ill-advised bow tie, which didn’t jive at all with what Tony knew of good old dad in his conservative grey suits. He also had one arm around Al Jolson, who was sporting blackface. Tony winced. Not his father’s finest moment. No wonder he’d always scowled at Mom and changed the subject when she brought up the Vitaphone days.

“Hey,” Tony said to the news-seller. “This studio. You know where it is?”

“Looks like it’s in Flatbush, pal,” the news-seller said.

“Yeah, I’m literate,” Tony said. “I got that far. Do you have a more specific address, or are you committed to being generally unhelpful?”

The news-seller shrugged and went back to reading about the Dodgers.

Tony tried to stop some passersby with similar results. A pair of girls in matching houndstooth swing coats wouldn’t even talk to him, but just edged away from him nervously. It was official. Tony definitely didn’t like Brooklyn. When he got back to his own time – if he got back to his own time – he would talk to Pepper about buying Brooklyn and replacing it with something nicer, like a garbage dump full of landmines.

Tony leaned up against a gleaming glass storefront for a moment, loosened that stupid bandage Sergeant Brown had worked so hard on, and put his head in his hands. He closed his eyes and tried to will away Brooklyn, tried to will away 1941, but that just made the sounds around him even clearer, just made 1941 come into sharper relief. Two men walked close by, arguing in what sounded like Yiddish, and the opening notes of ‘St. James Infirmary’ drifted from an upstairs window. Tony couldn’t tell if it was the Louis Armstrong version or the Cab Calloway version, and he didn’t particularly care, either. His music taste ran to the faster-paced, to the modern.

A sharp ringing cut through the mournful, jazzy notes, and Tony looked up just in time to see a green trolley pull up a few feet down the street. He reached it before it could move away, and pulled himself up before the conductor.

“I need Vitaphone studios,” he said. “Specifically, this studio.” He held up the paper.

“Sure,” said the conductor. “East fourteenth street. Five stops. Then two stops on the Brighton Beach BMT. I need seven cents.”

Tony dug in his wallet and found a nickel and two pennies. He handed them off to the conductor with a growing, unfamiliar sense of dread regarding his now-limited financial resources, and received a transfer for his trouble. The conductor motioned at a strap hanging from the ceiling, and Tony had just enough time to grab it before the trolley lurched off again. He spent the first part of the trip hanging on for dear life as the trolley careened around honking cabs and wayward knish carts, the second huddled under an awning at the outdoor transfer stop as thunder cracked ominously and it began to rain, and the third squished between a balding blond man in a box-back coat and a gum-popping teenage girl who reeked of cheap perfume. He took cursory note of the journey, but most of it simply didn’t register. The voices around him – from the swift, punchy accents to the low, sincere tones – each contained something of Steve. Steve, who was exceptional and unique, was suddenly everywhere: in every skinny boy with well-scrubbed ears and outdated manners, in every tall matron with quaint idioms and earnest blue eyes, and in every broad-shouldered man with high-waisted dress pants and a military bearing.

Tony didn’t like it, not because he didn’t like being reminded of Steve, but because he didn’t like being reminded of Steve when Steve wasn’t accessible.

 _“Can I draw it?” Steve had asked just that morning. “The suit, I mean.”_

 _“Why?” Tony said. “You draw? Like, in that little notebook of yours?”_

 _“No, Tony,” Steve said wryly. “I’m just pretending to draw every time I pull it out.”_

 _“Suits me,” Tony said. “We all have to do something to look busy when Hawkeye starts asking around for somebody to babysit the Two-Gun Kid. He always picks you, too. Isn’t that a little offensive? Like he automatically thinks you’re going to be best friends because neither of you knew what eBay was until last week?”_

 _“Tony.”_

 _“Fine,” Tony said. “Wait. I’ll give you a photo. How should I sign it? ‘To Steve, from Iron Man, the greatest hero America knows?’” Here he’d leaned over and stolen some low-fat, no-cholesterol tofu bacon from Steve’s plate. He’d been pretty sure Steve wouldn’t mind. He’d been pretty sure Steve hadn’t known it was low-fat, no-cholesterol tofu bacon, but, as Steve had opened the breakfast conversation by asking what Tony had done to the bacon to make it taste so strange, it was safe to say that he wouldn’t miss it much._

 _“I’d just like to sketch it,” Steve said seriously. “I’ve never seen anything like it before. Well, okay, now I have. But, when I first saw it, all I could think was suddenly the future wasn’t so disappointing after all. It was like those models at the World Expo, like—“_

 _“Maybe I’ll sign it, ‘To Cap, with love, from the best lay of your life.’”_

 _“How would you know you were the best lay of my life?” Steve said. “Seriously. I just want to draw it.”_

 _“I’ve got it! To the star-spangled man, from—“_

 _Steve had flicked eggs at his face then, and Tony had thrown some eggs right back, and then later on he’d ended up licking the eggs off of Steve’s neck, until –_

“Hey,” said the girl with the chewing gum. “Didn’t you say you were getting off here?”

“Yeah, thanks,” Tony said, snapping back to attention.

The BMT left him in a decidedly more genteel part of town, where stately apartment buildings with names like ‘Stratford Hall’ and the ‘Caton Arms’ faced delicate, pastel-painted Queen Anne homes replete with wraparound porches and corner towers domed in the shape of Hershey’s kisses. It was all sort of disgustingly Edwardian, but Tony could forgive that because, for a moment, he’d honestly thought he’d found his way out of Brooklyn, even if not out of the past altogether.

Just a few blocks away, a vivid red smokestack dotted the skyline, marring the illusion. ‘VITAPHONE’ was painted on it in bright blue letters, so Tony headed that way, until he reached a large brick building covered in posters of Barbara Stanwyck and Jimmy Cagney. The windows were boarded up, and the area was completely deserted. The door had a ‘CLOSED’ sign and a heavy, antique padlock that Tony unlocked using only one corner of his credit card. That was the thing with antiques; they were usually shitty and easily dismantled.

Pretty much everything in the studio was equally shitty and downright unusable for Tony’s purposes: film projectors and enormous, coiled cables and gleaming sound equipment that was undoubtedly top-of-the-line for right now, but looked like the aged, bleached bones of some bizarre mechanical dinosaur to Tony. However, if there was one thing Tony could say about any and every Howard Stark project, it was that there would be power at the heart of it. Howard had understood the importance of engine capacity, of force and pull and generation, probably even better than Tony himself did. For all that Howard had turned to weapons manufacturing, his first and greatest love had always been energy.

That was a good thing, too, because Tony wasn’t going to waste his arc reactor on this. Not when it was keeping him alive. Not when he had a good idea of what had gone wrong, and another forty-five ideas that weren’t exactly good, but weren’t total crapshoots, either.

Tony found the generator in the back room. He dislodged the back panel and set to work. It took some finesse; everything was ancient and cumbersome and too large, and he had to forage for tools in the sound production studio a few times before he finally had what he needed. Then he held up one of the cables, connected to the generator but large enough to coil at his feet like some gargantuan, venomous boa constrictor, and stared at it.

This was going to hurt.

A lot.

After a moment, Tony went back to the main studio space and turned on one of the shorts. It was ‘Hopalong Cassidy,’ an old favorite of his mom’s from when she was a kid. He raised the volume as high as he could get it and hoped that this would keep any passersby from noticing the screams.

Then he went to the back room, stripped down to his T-shirt, and put one hand underneath it. He lifted out the arc reactor just enough to let a cable get a foothold in the cavity underneath, and then, just as a safety measure, he retooled the wires under the reactor until he was sure this wouldn’t sabotage it or the electromagnet underneath. Then he connected the cable to the larger coiled one, and turned on the generator.

The thing with that much pain was, it almost canceled itself out. You couldn’t think of anything else, not even the sounds of your own screams, and in this case Tony didn’t mind much because it was working. The tin-plated ceiling above him blurred, and some time later (though Tony couldn’t tell how much time later because it all hurt too much) he saw the crimson smoke again, and Pepper looking worriedly at him from his right, and Steve – _his_ Steve – reaching for him from his left.

“We have to turn it off!” Pepper was saying. “He’s hurting himself!”

“If we do that,” Steve shouted back, above the sounds of Tony’s own yells, “Then he’s a goner!”

But then everything blurred again and someone who definitely wasn’t Steve shouted that they were turning off the generator, and Pepper seemed to shift into somebody new, a person with a wide forehead and sharp dark eyes and – god—that horrible mustache that Tony had always despised.

“What on God’s green earth is going on here?” Howard Stark said.

Tony had never hated his father more in his entire life.


	3. Chapter 3

The first thing he did once he came around fully was to check that his T-shirt was still hiding the arc reactor, and the second thing he did was to disconnect the cable and re-set all the wires as quickly and surreptitiously as possible (not very quickly or surreptitiously, since his fingers were shaking), and the third thing he did was to notice that Howard wasn’t paying him any attention at all.

Well.

That was just typical, wasn’t it?

“My god, McCoyle,” Howard said to a red-haired man who appeared to be standing guard, if ‘standing guard’ meant standing over Tony and staring hard at him as though hoping to make Tony’s head explode through the force of glares alone. “Look at the force this thing can generate! Esme, I want this replicated!”

“Yes, Howard,” said Esme, who was hidden behind the enormous generator and who therefore consisted of, as far as Tony knew, a tone thoroughly injected with long-suffering patience and a single slim, outstretched hand. The hand was grasping a coil of wire, which Howard took and replaced with a wrench.

“How do you think he did it?” Howard said.

“Who cares?” said McCoyle, redoubling his glaring efforts, “He’s a bum. Looks like a bum.”

Tony, who had been called a bum far too many times in the past twenty-four hours, wanted to offer a rebuttal, but all he could manage was some vaguely offended wheezing. His entire body was still on fire.

“What—“ Howard said, pulling away from the generator for a moment. “He’s alive?” He caught sight of Tony sitting on the coiled cables with his hands on his knees, panting through the aftershocks of pain. Then he took the wrench from Esme’s hand, substituted it again for the length of wire, and turned his attention back to the generator with a muttered, “So he is! Good for him.”

Good old Dad.

Actually, the mutter was something of a shock. It was more acknowledgement than Tony had ever received from Howard on a good day, never mind on the days when he’d been caught messing around with ( _improving_ , his mind supplied) some project of Howard’s.

“You want me to get rid of him, Howard?” said McCoyle. “He’s trespassing.”

“No, no,” Howard said, still engrossed in his work, and then he set Tony to choking with, “Offer him a job.”

The still-disembodied Esme sighed. “He’s a vandal who was probably trying to kill himself, Howard,” she said carefully. “He could have cut off power for all of Flatbush if he wasn’t careful.”

“Actually,” Tony forced out, “I couldn’t have. I modified it with an inverter circuit that would keep it from affecting the main power grid.”

There was sharp intake of breath from Howard.

“So you did!” he said, resurfacing from the generator again. “I didn’t even notice that.” He squinted at Tony momentarily, dark eyes narrowing in exactly that slant that always used to mean Tony was going to be banished to another room or another mansion or possibly to another continent.

Tony put a shaky hand up to his bandaged jaw.

God. Deja-vu, much? Hadn’t it always been like this? When Tony had been kicked out of boarding school (not that it mattered because Lawrenceville was only the third best boarding school in the country and MIT had already accepted him anyway and, really, the whole thing was Janet Van Dyne’s fault), it was, ’Maria, If He Isn’t Careful He’ll End Up In Prison Someday.’ And, when Tony had pointed out the flaws in one of Howard’s pet engineer’s designs (because that stuck-up prick hadn’t known what he was talking about; Tony had designed better jetpacks using Lincoln Logs), it was, ‘We Need To Watch That Arrogance, Maria, Before It Lands Your Son In Front Of A Federal Prosecutor.’ And, when Tony figured out a way to halve the company’s energy consumption (you’re welcome, Dad), it was, ‘Maria, Why Can’t The Boy Focus On His Schoolwork Like A Normal Person. You Should Find A Way To Curb That Recklessness Of His Or You’ll Be Posting Bail When It Gets Him In Trouble.’

"You're not some kind of criminal, are you?" this Howard said.

Really, Tony was just shocked that this Howard had addressed him directly, and also he was willing to question Tony’s inherent criminality, instead of simply presuming it to be fact and broadcasting it as an Edict From On High.

“As far as you know,” Tony said sullenly. “I’m a criminal _genius_.” He grimaced and massaged his arm. Tiny pinpricks of fire were traveling from shoulder to elbow. That wasn’t a good sign.

Howard raised an eyebrow at the offending limb, took in Tony’s face, which doubtlessly looked ashen and drawn and the very opposite of brilliant or trustworthy, and said, “A criminal is a criminal, my friend.” Then he went back to working on the generator.

Yeah. The criminal genius line had never worked on Howard.

Tony flexed his fingers, and was pleased when they didn’t fall off. He would probably make it through. That was good. If he had to die as a result of a failed experiment, he’d be sure it wouldn’t happen years before he was due to be born, and he’d be damn sure it wouldn’t happen while he was talking to his dad.

“What’s under the bandage?” Howard said.

“Besides my jaw?” Tony said snappishly. “A goatee.”

“How very Italo Balbo of you,” Howard said.

Tony exhaled, half in pain and half in frustration. “I really hope that’s not a dig at Italian people or something.”

“No, no,” Howard said, pausing in his work for a moment and giving Tony another hard look. “He was a fellow aviator, a sort of competitor of mine. I’d been looking forward to going toe-to-toe with him – once we finally get involved in this war, that is – but he was gunned down this past year.”

Okay. That was weird. Dad had never been the type to shy away from battle – far from it, but Tony remembered him mainly as a detached inventor and entrepreneur. Sure, Tony had said otherwise at award dinners or press conferences or military hearings, but privately he’d always known that Howard Stark had only been a very clever architect, a businessman who sat back and benefitted and thought up rationalizations for war, not some hotshot who went toe-to-toe with anyone.

“They say it was friendly fire, of course,” Howard said, swapping the wire in Esme’s hand for the wrench again and diving right back into whatever he was doing to the generator. De-Tony-ing it or something. “But it was Mussolini. Poor old Balbo. He wasn’t the right kind of fascist. I find they don’t like anyone who doesn’t line up exactly, don’t you?”

Tony was silent. He wasn’t an expert on fascists, and, anyway, he was still puzzling over the Howard Stark who hadn’t yet decided to sit back and profit off of other people’s battles.

“I notice you don’t object to my prediction,” Howard said.

“What?” said Tony.

“That we _will_ enter this war,” said Howard.

Tony raised an eyebrow. Had Howard said that? Well, it was good to know that Tony was already at the stage of filtering out the bulk of Howard’s pronouncements. With the last Howard Stark, getting to that point had taken a good nineteen years, quite a bit of time wasted on childish hero-worship, and a severe case of what the psychologists all diagnosed as extreme Freudian father hunger.

“I don’t object,” Tony said, “In fact, I’d say we’ll be at war by the end of this year. Anyway, if anyone can predict war, it’s you.”

There. Howard always liked hearing that.

“Esme—“ Howard said.

“No—“ said the incorporeal Esme.

“Offer this man a job.”

“He needs to go to the hospital,” Esme said. “Or possibly to prison. He’s greasy, disheveled, his clothes are obscene, and—“

“But I own the company.”

“Howard—“

“And my word is law,” said Howard, “And I say we employ him.”

“I’m pretty sure I get a say,” Tony said, annoyed. He slid down to the floor and rested his head against the coiled cable for a moment. The aftershocks were finally beginning to wear off, but Tony was willing to suffer them ten times over if it meant he wasn’t right here, in the now (or was that the then?) with his father. “I haven’t said yes.”

“Is that so?” Howard said.

“Yes.”

“You have some prospects of your own lined up for the future, is that it?”

“You could say that,” Tony said.

Howard, who would take his habit of ignoring Tony’s express wishes to the grave, only said, “McCoyle, bring my car around. I want to get to know my newest employee.”

That was how Tony found himself in the back seat of a custom-bodied sports car (if you could call it that; Tony was more inclined to call it an artifact, gleaming though it was), right alongside the terrible, slick blueprint of the man he could credit with a lifetime of discouragement and neuroses. On some level, Tony kept expecting to be lectured; that was the problem with this scenario.

Okay. That was one of the problems with this scenario. One of many, and also the least pressing, as this Howard Stark was clearly a failed prototype or something: no lecture seemed forthcoming.

This Howard wasn’t a day over thirty, dressed like James Bond, and spoke in the precise, snappy tones of an Old Hollywood leading man. He had a flashy mauve tie and an engraved golden cigarette case and a car he’d obviously worked on himself, if the adjustments to the fender and grille were anything to go by. He also had a pair of women’s opera gloves stashed in back seat, alongside a powder blue girdle, a cigarette with traces of coral lipstick on it, and a note from someone named Betty, who’d left her address and thanked him for ‘that gas of a night at the ballpark.’

“Well, what’s your answer to my offer?” said Howard Stark, who was a hypocrite and had clearly had too many of his own illicit love affairs to have justified being that upset over the whole thing with Janet Van Dyne. “And your name. Did you give me that already? I’ve forgotten it; tell me again.”

Tony sighed. All he needed to get back to his time was one generator, and two cables, and hopefully some better tools than the ones he’d found in the sound studio. And this offer as good as promised him all of that; only it was _Howard_ who was doing the offering.

Tony really wanted to say no.

Actually, Tony really wanted to say, “Go fuck yourself, please and thanks, because every time I’ve ever followed your lead I’ve screwed myself over and the whole rest of the world in the process, so – if you don’t mind (and, actually, I don’t give a fuck if you do mind) – I’ll just do this myself.”

But what had this Howard done to deserve that? Right now he was a hotshot young aviator; it was only in the future that he’d be a crappy father.

And that was the bigger issue at stake, wasn’t it? The future.

Howard notwithstanding, the future wasn’t all terrible. Tony had a purpose there; he had a chance to fix generations of Stark fuckups and the fuckups other people made, as well; he had friends who put up with him and sometimes also took over his company when he clearly couldn’t run it anymore; he had a sweet lab; he had a sweeter suit – god, he missed it; he had a heroic, fantastic, and almost-perfect team (discounting Hawkeye and discounting Black Widow, too, when she got in those moods where all she did was threaten to fuck Tony up, but awarding extra points for the Norse God who was a riot to go bar crawling with); he had daily opportunities to make Coulson’s job more difficult; and, god, who was he kidding? He had _Steve_.

All of that – hell, even just Steve by himself – was worth putting up with a million Howard Starks for. So he just closed his eyes and took a breath and said, “I’m Tony. And are there generators? I have a thing for generators.”

“We’ve noticed,” said Esme from the front seat. (She had a very nice body, as it turned out, and, really, Tony would have tried to make a better impression on her if he hadn't been quite literally saving himself for his future boyfriend, Captain America).

“Tony,” Howard said. “As in Anthony? That’s a family name for me. A good sign.”

“As in your Uncle Anthony,” said Esme, “Who you hate.”

“And he’s a fellow generator enthusiast,” Howard said.

“Tried to kill himself with one, probably,” said McCoyle.

“Or tried to do something _obscene_ with one,” Esme said, “which is even wors—“

“You have a seriously dirty mind,” Tony said. “She? Has a seriously dirty mind.”

“You said you had a _thing_ for _generators_ —“

“And it is my solemn word that he can have all the generators he wants and he can do whatever he likes with them as long as he promises to upgrade them like he did the last one and also to keep any obscene details to himself,” Howard said.

“I’m in,” Tony said quickly, before Esme or McCoyle could object again. “When do we start? Now? I’ll start now if you want.”

“Easy, my friend,” Howard said. “It’s almost evening. And Mayor LaGuardia has summoned me to his weekly Wednesday poker night. We can start tomorrow morning.” Howard waved a hand at Esme, who rolled her eyes and reached into the glove compartment. She pulled out stack of embossed cards, selected one, and gingerly offered it to Tony.

It had his father’s name in business-like navy blue letters, right above the title of 'Advisor to the Commandant.’ This was less impressive than the titles Howard would later assume, but, then again, it was only 1941. The Manhattan project hadn’t picked up that much steam yet. Beneath the title, there was a modest-sounding address: 204 Washington Park, Brooklyn, NY. Tony sighed inwardly. At the very least, he’d been hoping Howard’s business would take him out of Brooklyn, but no such luck.

Howard tapped the address. “Report here. Is there anywhere I can drop you off for tonight?”

“Sure,” Tony said. He didn’t have anyplace to stay, but, if he was going to be in 1941 Brooklyn for another night, then there was someone he wanted to talk to. “There’s a YMCA off Sixth Avenue. Do you know where that is?”

“Less than a few minutes away,” Howard promised.

Tony wasn’t an expert on current local ordinances, but, judging by the way Howard had McCoyle speed up, and by the number of honking cabs left in the car’s wake, it took the breaking of several traffic laws for Howard to keep that promise. Tony stared at Howard blankly for a moment before climbing out of the car. Howard-Stark-the-father had been all about upholding the rules and breaking his promises. Evidently Howard-Stark-the-employer was a different animal entirely.

It figured.

“Bring a surname when you come,” Howard said from the window. “And Esme will want some references or something. Don’t bring those if you think you can avoid her, but I wouldn’t bet that you can.” Then the car pulled away from the curb and sped off down Sixth Avenue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no idea if inverter circuits can do what I say they can do! So, engineer-y/technical genius-y readers, if they absolutely cannot do that in any universe ever, can you let me know? Then I'll know to change it.


	4. Chapter 4

The YMCA was built along grander lines than Tony would have supposed. All red brick and sandy limestone, it loomed over half a street block and resembled a fortress more than anything else. Young men in shirtsleeves loitered near the entrance, smoking and trading jokes, and Tony looked them over, searching for Steve’s face, before he realized that he was searching for his Steve, not the Steve who was at least a foot shorter than any of these men.

He made his way through the wide double doors and found a sparsely decorated parlor. Some more young men were reading bibles in a corner, and others were thronged near the stairs, immersed in what was clearly a naughty picture. Tony decided to approach the naughty picture guys. They seemed more his type.

“Bucky Barnes is staying here, yeah?” he asked one of them, a thick-necked man with thinning hair. “I’m looking for his friend, Steve Rogers.”

“Sure,” said the man. “Tiny. He hangs around.”

Tony waited, but the man had turned back to the picture (a long-legged redhead in heavy makeup and a negligee), and didn’t seem interested in elaborating.

“Is he hanging around now?” Tony said.

“How should I know? Guy like that could have gotten knocked over by a stiff breeze. Or maybe he fell through the cracks in the floor,” the man said, turning back to Tony momentarily and then stopping short. He eyed Tony’s bandaged face and bruised knuckles and took a step back, seeming to conclude that Tony was dangerous and possibly deranged. “He doesn’t stay here, but Barnes has a room on the third floor. If they’re not there, maybe they’re in the canteen downstairs. I don’t know anything. You hurt them; I didn’t see anything.”

“You already qualify as an accomplice,” Tony told him. Then he made his way to the third floor, briefly considering that, if that guy was your typical Brooklyn resident, then conversion to a landmine-ridden garbage dump was too kind a fate for the city of Brooklyn.

The third floor had wide halls, high ceilings, and a succession of tiny, cramped rooms. Most rooms were unmarked, but some had cards affixed to the doors with names in large, careful first-grader print. Young men sat playing chess in the halls or smoking out of narrow windows. Tony nearly believed he’d landed in a particularly dull college dorm, and kept expecting to find whiteboards covered in obscene doodles and half-erased phone numbers, or bulletin boards overflowing with neon-colored flyers. Instead, peering through each half-open door, he saw men on narrow beds reading magazines with lurid, pulpy covers, and others crammed six-to-a-room, talking excitedly amongst themselves.

There was one room, even narrower than the others, tucked into a corner of the building, and Tony walked straight past it with only one casual glance at the slight, unobtrusive figure sitting beside the bed. Then he heard a low, familiar laugh, and he could have kicked himself for making the same mistake twice. Steve. Not his Steve, obviously, but the closest thing to him.

By the time Tony had doubled back and reached the door, Steve’s laugh had flared into dry, wheezing coughs. Tony winced to hear it; his Steve never coughed. A smartly-dressed young man darted out from behind the door and leaned over Steve, brushing aside a truly primitive shaving kit to begin fumbling with a box on the night table. He pulled out a cigarette and offered it to Steve, which was a pretty crappy idea considering how badly that could irritate Steve’s lungs.

“You know,” Tony said, “That’s only going to make it worse.”

“Take a hike,” said the smartly-dressed young man without turning around. With one hand he lit Steve’s cigarette, and with the other he held up the box on the night table. It was small and cardboard and bright green with crisp red capital letters that promised, “IMMEDIATE ASTHMA RELIEF WITH DR. J. L. B. SCHIFFMAN’S STRAMONIUM CIGARETTES.”

Tony had known medicine used to be terrible, but he’d never realized it was this bad.

“Stramonium.” he said. “An alkaloid, right?”

Steve managed to get a good look at Tony between coughs and his eyes widened. He batted at his still-attentive friend, who turned around and – yep. He was clean-shaven and better dressed now, clearly in preparation for a night on the town, but it was definitely Mr. cocky blue-eyes. Bucky Barnes. _Steve_ ’s Bucky Barnes. Bucky-my-old-best-friend. Bucky-who-I-singlehandedly-took-on-a-Nazi-base-to-rescue. Bucky-who-died-and-made-me-nearly-insane-with-grief-so-I-went-after-Hydra-once-and-for-all-and-got-myself-frozen-for-seventy-years-for-my-trouble.

God. That was all over this kid? Really? Not that Tony hadn’t seen Steve sacrifice just as much for people who probably deserved it less because, hey, that was just who Steve _was_ , but Tony only had to look at this guy to know that he was all smarm and bravado. Evidently Steve was into that.

Well. Okay. Tony had already sort of known that.

“That’s only going to offer you temporary relief at best,” Tony said, “Smoke inhalation acts as a bronchial irritant. It isn’t good for you at all in the long run.”

“Buddy, a long run is exactly what you’d better take,” said Bucky, carefully removing his tie and rolling up his sleeves. Steve regarded Tony grimly from the chair behind Bucky and made to stand, but was caught by another coughing bout and eventually settled for taking a long and deliberate drag of his cigarette.

Tony held up his hands and grinned. “Not here to fight. Just offering you some friendly advice, that’s all.”

Bucky said, “You can take your advice and—“

“So. Do you fight Nazis in back alleys often?” Tony asked Steve.

“Does he _what_?”

Alright. So that hadn’t been Tony’s best pickup line. But neither was it such a terrible line that Bucky Barnes needed to look that dismayed.

“It was the Bund,” Steve said quickly. “It wasn’t—Bucky. It was just that –“

“You must be kidding. Tell me you’re kidding.”

Steve made to stand up, but began coughing violently again. He settled for gesturing at Tony, and, once he was able to speak again, said, “Look, can we deal with this later? I don’t know what he wants, but—“

“Trouble, and he’ll get it,” Bucky said, not turning away from Steve for a minute.

“Only if that’s what you’re offering,” Tony said. He edged into the room and leaned against the doorframe. The pain from his attempt at forward-time travel was mostly gone, but there were some twinges along his spine that demanded he rest against something. It probably wasn’t too wise to take up Bucky’s challenge in this condition, but what could he do? He kind-of, sort-of hated the kid already.

“Oh, I’m offering,” Bucky said. “But you’ll excuse me if I help my friend out—“

“I don’t need help—“ Steve began.

“Before dealing with some creep who just came around looking for a fight!“

“I’m not looking for a fight,” Tony said firmly. (Because, seriously, what was it that made the entire population of Brooklyn so ready to begin brawling at a minute’s notice? This city was basically an enormous last-man-standing Taipei Deathmatch waiting to happen, though you’d never think it from the way Brooklyn would be someday overrun with insufferably twee and self-righteous organic produce aficionados. Which, like, on second thought: never mind the whole landmine-ridden-garbage-dump plan. Brooklyn would get what was coming to it.)

“Either way, you’re not top of my list right now,” Bucky said.

“Oh, I’ll just wait here, then?” Tony said, getting comfortable against the doorframe. “Is that okay?”

“ _No_ ,” Steve said.

“Fine,” Bucky snapped. “Why didn’t you tell me you were fighting the Bund now?”

“Why does it matter?” Steve said.

“It matters because there’re something like eight thousand of them, and you might as well go to war with Yorkville!”

“Now you’re just being overdramatic.”

“Over—“ Bucky broke off and slammed one hand angrily on the night table. “You have a death wish.”

“You know what they’re like, Bucky.”

“Yeah.” Tony said. “Wait. What are they like again?” He didn’t like feeling ignored, though being left out of the conversation had given him the opportunity to examine Bucky’s room. It was fairly tidy for a young man’s room, but then there wasn’t much to mess up. There was a single narrow window beside the chair, and a cheap lamp on the night table that gave off only a dim circle of light. A shabby, half-open wardrobe was tucked in one corner of the room, and a YMCA wall calendar hung near the window, where it proclaimed to visitors that Believing In Christ Brings Spring Ever Closer.

Perhaps in an (almost certainly futile) attempt to liven the place up a bit, Bucky had pinned pictures of Hedy Lamarr and Maria Montez to the walls above the bed and a rough sketch of two boys to the wardrobe interior, where it was half-hidden behind a cheap serge suit. Tony squinted at the sketch. One of the boys was tall and ruddy-cheeked and had an overconfident smile, and the other was frail and blond and achingly familiar, for all that Tony had never seen him before. Tony had a feeling the drawing had been ripped from one of those little leather-bound notebooks, cheap and old-fashioned and exactly like the ones his Steve carried around.

He should have given Steve immediate permission to draw his suit.

Hell, when he got back to his time, he was going to let Steve draw every goddamn thing in his laboratory, if that would make Steve happy.

“They’re creeps,” Steve was saying in the meantime. “You know that, Bucky. You know how they harass people, and those horrible parades they have, and—“

“And how, somehow, most people in Brooklyn just manage to avoid them!”

“—And you should’ve heard how one of them threatened Mrs. Wallach last week—“

“Which is nothing compared to what they’ll be threatening to do _you_ the next time you—“

“—and it just made my blood boil how they—“

“—butt heads with them, never mind—“

“—think they can do that to somebody because they spew all that America first garbage—“

“—how bent you’ve got that Father Coughlin crowd on Smith Street—“

“—when all they mean is how they only care about themselves, how they don’t care about this war—“

“It isn’t our war yet, Steve!”

“It’s everybody’s.” Steve said. “And they’re bringing it here anyway, the way they go around starting trouble and putting pressure on people and—“ Here Steve broke out into coughing again and took another drag of his cigarette. Tony became acutely aware of the way Bucky’s hand moved from the night table to steady Steve’s shoulder.

“Sounds like someone needs to take them on,” Tony said, moving just one iota closer to Steve’s chair.

“Exactly,” Steve managed, midway between a cough and yet another drag of his cigarette. Tony itched to pull it out of his hand. Hadn’t he pointed out how bad it was for Steve? And there was a mental picture he couldn’t comprehend: Captain “Smokes for Medical Reasons” America. Way to tarnish the image.

“Someone. Not you,” Bucky was saying. “I hear some goons in your neighborhood have it out for you because you can’t keep your mouth shut, fine.”

“Only two or three! And so what? I can dish it out with the best of them.”

Bucky snorted. “I hear Arnie had to pull two of them off you yesterday, fine.”

“I was wrapping it up when he came along,” Steve muttered.

“I hear you’re in a fight with someone _else_ , fine.”

“Honestly, you don’t have to keep _tabs_ on me—“

“I find you facing down some drunk who can’t shave properly, fine—“

“Hey,” Tony said mildly, “Pot, kettle. If I recall, you looked pretty shitty yourself this morning.”

“But the Bund? They’re not even local, Steve. Did you head to Yorkville just to challenge them? Where’d they even find you?”

“Where do you think?” Steve said, squaring his jaw mulishly.

Bucky took a sharp breath. “What—“ he began.

Then he stopped and took his hand from Steve’s shoulder. “Don’t tell me you were—“

Breaking off, Bucky moved to the bed and took a moment to collect himself. “If you think—“

Bucky stopped again. He very purposefully clasped his fists in his lap and tried a fourth time: “You’re completely _bats_ if—“

Steve just shrugged.

A muscle in Bucky’s jaw twitched.

Tony was intrigued.

“Care to enlighten the rest of us?” he said.

Steve looked at Tony. Bucky looked at Tony.

“Fine. I bite,” Bucky said. “Who the hell are you?”

“Tony,” Tony said.

They continued to stare at him.

“Tony who…?” Steve said carefully, as if he half-suspected Tony was setting up a really bad knock-knock joke and was slightly embarrassed to be obliging him.

Tony sighed.

He really would have to work on the surname part, only he had a feeling that the longer he was in 1941 the less he’d want to spread around that he was Tony Stark. As far as he knew, there hadn’t been any Tony Starks in this time period, and certainly none who’d saved Steve from wannabe Nazis and been knocked out by Bucky Barnes and impressed Howard Stark so much that he hired them on the spot. What if he changed the future? What if he bifurcated time somehow and made it impossible to get back to _his_ future?

“Carbonell,” he said. Dad’s surname was out, so he might as well go with one from Mom’s side of the family.

“Tony Carbonell,” Steve repeated. He didn’t seem to know what to make of that, and—hey — Tony understood completely. They were in 1941. There wasn’t much Steve could do with that information in 1941. It wasn’t like asking around after Tony, looking him up in the phone book, hiring one of those private detectives with the smoky offices and the lame yellow trench coats, or doing whatever the hell else people did in the forties to get more information would prove fruitful. Tony Carbonell didn’t exist. At this point, neither did Tony Stark.

“Right,” Bucky said. “Let me try this again: Tony Carbonell, who the hell are you?”

“I’m the person who saved your friend from the Bund, for one,” Tony said. “Nice way you had of repaying me, incidentally—“

“Oh, can you believe this?” Bucky said, standing again. “Here, I’ve got some more repayment, since you liked it so much the first time—“

Steve put a hand on his sleeve. “Wait,” he said.

Bucky looked down at him.

“He’s not lying, Bucky,” Steve said. He took another drag of the cigarette and then shifted uncomfortably in his chair, facing the window and the classically Brooklyn view it offered (that is, a broad expanse of red brick less than two feet away). After a moment, he turned away from that enthralling vista and locked eyes with Tony instead. “Is it an apology you’re after? A thank you?”

Tony wasn’t sure what he was after. Steve. Obviously. Not the one in front of him, but the one who fought alongside him, the one who kept him steady, the one who embodied every virtue of the past (though those were rapidly shrinking, in Tony’s estimation), but who also resided in the wonderful, much-missed future. _Tony’s_ future, where he was needed and where he saved lives and where he’d already earned Steve’s trust.

Having to start all over again with this Steve was frustrating, to say the least.

Steve seemed to take his silence as confirmation. “Well, then I’m sorry. And you did help. I mean, I’m not saying I was losing—“

Tony raised an eyebrow.

Steve continued on stubbornly, “—Because I was holding my own, but, all the same, I would’ve taken a hit if you hadn’t been there to help. So thank you, Mr. Carbonell.”

“Tony will do,” Tony said smoothly, moving to sit on the windowsill, which was easier on those parts of him that still ached, and also close enough to Steve to get a decent look at him for the first time.

Steve looked… Well. Small, obviously. And exhausted, and maybe even a little bit exasperated, like he very much didn’t want to be dealing with Tony. Not that Steve ever really conveyed aggravation the way lots of other people did, with their whining and their huffing and their self-importance, but Tony knew where to find the evidence of Steve’s frustration. It was in the downturned mouth, and in the way one of Steve’s thumbs itched underneath his pointer and began to tap irritatedly against his middle finger.

If this had been his Steve, Tony would’ve been able to break him of that irritation in an instant, with an invitation to spar or an outing to some crappy art gallery downtown or even a well-timed jibe. But this wasn’t his Steve.

This Steve seemed mystified to find Tony so close. He shifted again and closed his eyes briefly, a movement that would have gone unnoticed on Captain America but that made scrawny asthmatic Steve Rogers seem tighter and narrower and so drawn in that his lashes looked too-long and too-dark against his cheek. Then he looked tiredly at Tony and said, “So are we square?”

“As far as I can tell,” Tony said.

Steve seemed to expect him to move away after this, but Tony made no effort to do so, although he did consider it for a moment.

Was it worth it, to try so hard? Tony would be gone by tomorrow, as soon as he got his hands on another generator, so what right did he have to intrude on Steve’s life—that is, on this Steve’s life? Sure, there was that familiar stubbornness there, and something fixed and forthright around the eyes; in many ways, this was ( _his Steve_ ) Cap, disproving the notion that America’s greatest hero was born entirely from kitschy propaganda reels and questionable U.S. army experiments. But this Steve was untested, and so young, and yet not adrift the way Tony’s Steve sometimes was. This Steve was entirely grounded in his own world and his own people, and none of those people happened to be Tony.

Why did that bother Tony so much? What did it matter, as long as he found his way back to his Steve?

Steve sighed. “Look, if it helps,” he said, “It was lousy of me to treat you like that after what you did. I can be a real hothead sometimes—“

“Sometimes, he says,” Bucky muttered. He’d returned to sitting on the bed and was in the process of readjusting his discarded tie. “Sometimes. And where’s my apology, I wonder?”

“You’re not getting one; you’re a pain in the neck,” Steve retorted, before turning back to Tony. “I felt rotten about it. Probably should have stuck around the mission to see how you were doing, but—“

“No harm done,” Tony said. (He had a funny feeling that maybe Steve was apologizing too much, and that he, Tony, was not apologizing enough. But Tony owing someone an apology, well… that just made it Wednesday again, didn’t it? And what was he supposed to say? ‘Sorry I’m your boyfriend from the future, but you don’t know it yet, obviously, so I’m freaking you out right now, but, don’t worry, I’ll be gone soon and you won’t see me again until the 21st century where eventually you will think I’m totally awesome, no, really, trust me on this’?

Fat chance Steve would believe that, especially that last part. Sometimes Tony hardly believed it himself.)

“Good,” said Bucky, unrolling his sleeves. “Because _I_ wasn’t going to wait around just to have Edie Keeler lecture me about going to church. So is that it, Tony Carbonell? You come all the way to my place for an apology? ‘Cause we have a date—“

“You have a date,” Steve said quickly.

“She has a friend.”

“You mean like how Edie Keeler had a friend?”

“Pearl’s a nice girl!” Bucky said.

“I wouldn’t know,” Steve said flatly. “She spent the whole night talking to you, and then you took her to Coney a month later. “

Bucky shrugged. “We had a connection.”

“Yeah? She the one you’re going out with tonight?”

“Oh, come on,” Bucky said. “What’s gotten into you?”

“I guess I’ve just had a rough day,” Steve said. He bit his lip, and something about that movement made everything about him – his nose, his eyes, his bushy brows – look far too large for his thin face. After a moment, Steve collected his hat and coat from the back of the chair and said, “I’m just beat, that’s all, Bucky. I’ve got to get home.”

“I’ll go with you,” Tony said.

Steve shot him an incredulous look.

“It’s late,” Tony offered.

That wasn’t a lie.

It also wasn’t why he wanted to go with Steve.

He’d wanted to meet this Steve, and he had, and, okay, that was the easy part. Just meeting people was always the easy part. Hell, just meeting them and just sleeping with them and just forgetting their names and just not caring when they cussed him out later: that was always the easy part.

But Tony didn’t want that with Steve, not even with this Steve, not with any Steve in any decade ever. He didn’t want another bored meet-and-forget. He wanted this Steve to like him. Just a little bit. Not so much that he’d remember Tony with any clarity, because, hey, that could screw with the established timeline or something and even Tony wasn’t messed up enough to fuck with the past just to appease his ego. But maybe Steve could like Tony just enough to treat Tony as easily as he treated Bucky, as easily as Cap treated Iron Man. Just enough to regard Tony with something other than suspicion.

It didn’t seem fair that all the important things about his Steve could be preserved in this Steve – his convictions, his bullheadedness, his guts – all the important things except for his affection for Tony. Maybe that hadn’t been an important thing at all; maybe it had been a side effect of Steve being marooned in the wrong decade and needing a friend very badly. Tony could sympathize with that.

Even if the thought of that being the case made him want to start screaming.

“Wait,” Bucky said, breaking through Tony’s reverie. “Seriously? You’re leaving?”

“Oh, it’s my first day at work tomorrow,” Tony told him. “I should get to bed early. You know how it is.”

“Cute,” Bucky said. “Go jump in the Gowanus; see if I care. I was talking to Ste—“ He broke off. Steve was already halfway down the hall.

“Well I guess I can’t count on you for company,” Bucky called out. He eyed Tony with hostility.

“Don’t look at me for company,” Tony said, and went to catch up with Steve. “You’re all smarm and bravado. That’s not really my type.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N that I forgot to include in previous chapters: the history here is only mostly accurate. The Bund was a real American Nazi organization that had a heavy presence in the predominantly German-American neighborhood of Yorkville, but they didn't actually wear swastikas after 1938. Similarly, Vitaphone studios in Flatbush really existed, but operations moved to the West Coast in the late 30s. And the _Daily Eagle_ was a real, respected paper, not the rag Tony seems to think it is.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for mentions of segregation and the really horrible "freedom of association" argument, which was used to justify segregation. And Tony is about twenty years too early for the lunch counter thing, though he doesn't know that because he knows as much about the forties as I did before I started researching this fic. So not a whole lot.

Tony found Steve tying one of his shoes underneath a flickering incandescent streetlamp. It was already dark out, and the streets here were hemmed in by rows of narrow brownstones with curlicue iron fences and house numbers in bright stained glass. Raucous, drunken men clustered on the stoops, and a few figures in fedoras hurried past, talking about _that dame with the glass eye who does that act up in Harlem_ and _Roscoe’s cousin with the blonde hair; she’s swell_. Someday this area would host well-lit cafes and overpriced boutiques and affluent mothers with coddled children in state-of-the-art strollers, but, for now, this part of the neighborhood belonged to the young men.

“Are you following me?” Steve asked, once he’d straightened up and seen Tony.

“Of course not,” Tony said, which was a total lie, obviously, but this was a public street, so it wasn’t like Steve could contest it.

Okay. Given the creepy and patently stalker-ish nature of this behavior, Tony supposed he should feel bad. But he didn’t. At the best of times, which was to say in more modern times, times that came with computers and robots and nanotechnology and the internet, he was happiest when he was with Steve. Even when none of those things were actually present, when it was just him and Steve and some crappy big band music Steve thought was awesome, or some formerly-crumbling refurbished tenement building that would make Steve cry out, “ _It’s still here Tony, can you believe it?_ ” he was still at his happiest because he was with Steve. That hadn’t changed just because this Steve was small and scowling and secure in his surroundings.

And, anyway, it wasn’t like he could intimidate Steve. Not because Tony wasn’t going to hurt him – although, obviously, Tony _wasn’t_ – but because this Steve was just as unlikely to be afraid as the Steve Tony knew. He was just as firm and just as foolhardy and just as much a survivor. Even if Tony had the worst of intentions, he couldn’t possibly imagine a Steve Rogers who’d be daunted by that.

“So where’d the Bund find you?” Tony said.

“I was at the recruiting office,” Steve said, starting down the street. Tony followed, keeping pace with him as nonchalantly as possible. “They followed me home.”

“We’re talking about six-foot-something goons, not a bunch of puppies,” Tony said, because that was kind of a crappy explanation, and he figured he ought to know why wannabe Nazis spent all their time targeting his boyfriend. Before, he’d assumed it was their grudge against an enemy super soldier who was also the greatest American hero of the twentieth century, but there really was no reason to pick on this Steve, with his knobbly wrists and his toothpick arms. Not that Nazis needed a reason, he supposed, but still.

“What do you mean, they followed you home?”

“I mean,” Steve said, “That they’re the kind of people who would just as soon not have anybody join up.” He pulled his overcoat tighter around him to ward off the chill, although Tony didn’t think it was cold at all and he was only in a T-shirt. This Steve didn’t have much body mass, though, so maybe he was cold all the time. Maybe it was an insulation problem.

“So they waste their time targeting new recruits or something?”

Steve sighed. “They wouldn’t call it a waste of time. There could be a war soon, you know.”

“And they think there won’t be a war if they manage to bully everyone away from the army?”

“Well,” Steve said. “I may have. Uh. Told them what I thought of their signs?”

“Their signs?”

“’Defend America First, Defend America Only,’ ’True Americans Don’t Get Involved,’” Steve said. “Garbage like that. I hate that. People have a right to think what they want, I guess, but I’ll never think it’s best to look the other way, especially when you’re looking away from something as big as this war.”

Tony was silent for a moment, because – _god_ – there he was. Cap. He was bundled up in a dirty overcoat, with his hat sliding over his eyebrows and the soles of his child-sized shoes worn paper thin, but there he was, all the same.

And he was talking about people looking the other way. Honestly. Tony loved him, he really did, but did he have to pick out that particular crime? Out of all crimes, did he have to get worked up over the crime of the foolish and the extremely lucky? Tony was pretty familiar with it, actually, and he got worked up over it too, only that was because it just so happened to be a crime Tony himself had committed.

They reached the corner and Steve skirted around a puddle of some indescribable oily filth. Tony, who was less of an accomplished pedestrian, walked right into it. So much for the Testonis.

“Well, they’re wrong,” Tony said, gamely ignoring both the aches in his body and the damage to his shoes. “I mean, they’re harming people by looking the other way, aren’t they? And I guess there are times you’re just unaware of what’s going on, you know. Blissfully unaware. But, trust me, it can be a rude awakening once you find out. They’re in for a rude awakening, I mean—“

“Sure,” Steve said, bemused.

Oh god. Tony was rambling.

“—I’m not, like, talking about you or me. Obviously. Obviously you’ve never, like, discovered that your actions were all just part of some horrible fucked-up cycle and that you were this piece of shit profiting off of people’s misery by keeping your back turned. Not like that happens to many people. I hope it doesn’t, anyway. I just mean in general terms—“

Steve raised an eyebrow, and Tony decided he’d better wrap up this particular topic of conversation. Not like he wanted to be talking about it, anyway; it’s just that he felt like a complete fake, walking alongside a Steve Rogers who didn’t turn his back on people, who’d _never_ turned his back on people, and pretending that he, Tony, was just as good as that. “Anyway,” Tony said quickly, “They sound like morons. What are signs going to do? Like there won’t just be a draft when the war starts up?”

Steve raised an eyebrow. “There already is,” he said. “All men between eighteen and thirty-five were made eligible. It’s been all over the news, but I guess you might not know. You’re too ol—“ he broke off, embarrassed, and veered in the direction of a sturdy post topped with a lit green globe. Art Moderne lettering on the post announced that the **SUBWAY** was nearby.

“Old?” Tony said, as they rounded the post and made their way down a steep flight of stairs. Clearly, Steve had been about to say ‘old’ and not, like, ‘out of your proper time period.’ Hopefully any gaffes Tony made could be explained away similarly. Although, he wasn’t that old, was he? There was an age difference between him and Steve (that Tony had asked about once and it had made Steve glare and then he’d modified it to, “ _But, you’re older than eighteen, right, because there was this thing with Congresswoman Jacobson’s adoptive granddaughter and, trust me, I had no way of knowing but now I have to be_ really _careful—_ ” and Steve had said, “ _Tony, do you think I was a teenager when I enlisted?_ and that had been that). But there must’ve been an even bigger age difference between him and this Steve, who was maybe twenty, tops. Or was that just his size that made him seem so young? Tony snuck a look at him as they emerged into the homely warren of tunnels that comprised the New York subway. No older than twenty-one, probably. And he still looked embarrassed.

“Sorry,” Steve said.

“It’s fine,” Tony assured him. “Although, is it that obvious? I think I look pretty good for my age. I have this friend; she used to tell me all the time that my drinking would age me too fast. Which, I mean, it did for my old man. He looked like a completely different person by the time he was in his forties. Well, completely different except for the mustache, which was not a good look on him at any age, let me just tell y—“

“I’ve got to get on the train,” Steve said, still uncomfortable, although possibly the discomfort was now on Tony’s behalf. “It was nice meeting you.”

“Oh, me too,” Tony said. “I’ll be getting on the train too, not that it was nice meeting you too. Although it is. Nice meeting you, I mean, but—“

Steve raised his other eyebrow. Tony was going to drive them both up into his hairline at this point.

“Just wait,” Tony said. He found the station booth and forked over his last nickel for the fare. Possibly this was a bad idea because he probably couldn’t get to wherever Howard’s generator was with no money, but Tony wasn’t very good at handling very small sums. There just weren’t enough zeroes to play around with.

This act of bad financial planning complete, he made his way back to Steve, who was waiting politely but also somewhat beleagueredly, if the way he was shifting from foot to foot was any indication. In any case, it was nice of Steve to wait. Tony wasn’t going to assume that he did this because he liked Tony, because even his Steve hadn’t liked him right away, and, in fact, the only people who ever had had been his robots and this one ex-girlfriend who had a weird thing for masks and who also turned out to be a mob leader.

But the point was, even if Steve was just being polite, that didn’t matter. Tony could work at this, if he had to. Not that he’d have to beyond tonight, since by this time tomorrow he would be several thousand tomorrows in the future. But he’d be several thousand tomorrows in the future with his Steve who was also this Steve, or had been, and it was the principle of the thing, the principle being that Tony Stark and Steve Rogers got along (eventually) and liked each other (eventually) and that ought to be a constant. In any decade. In all of them.

So there.

“After you,” he told Steve, and followed him through the turnstile, and then, just to keep up the conversation, he added, “So this draft. It fixes all your problems, doesn’t it?”

“What?” Steve said, sputtering. “Why would you think that?”

“Once you’re older than eighteen, they have your name on the books, right?” Tony said. “So it’s just a matter of time, isn’t it?”

Steve suddenly became very interested in scrutinizing the tiled lettering on the wall opposite the subway platform.

“Well,“ he began. “They sort of called me up already. You know, for the first term of duty? This past fall? It was in all the papers. Big news, since lots of guys who got called didn’t want to go.”

Tony furrowed his brow. That didn’t make any sense. Surely Steve hadn’t been one of those guys? He’d told Tony he’d wanted to enlist so badly that he’d tried five or six times.

“Not…lots of guys like you?”

“No!” Steve said hotly. “I was ready to report!”

“So what happened?”

“I got sick,” Steve said. “Sinusitis. Was in Brooklyn Hospital for a month and a half, and they even sent a guy to look into it because they thought I might be dodging.”

Steve balled his fists and stuck them into the pockets of his oversized coat. “He took one look at me and said I didn’t ever have to worry about being drafted. I’d been sick too many times; I was too small; I couldn’t ever pass the physical. The guy at the recruiting office today said the same thing,” he said. “Not soldier material, I guess.”

Tony wasn’t sure what to say in response to that. Obviously Steve was soldier material. _Obviously._ He’d just need a few years to prove it; that was all. A few years and a few inches and a few hundred pounds of rock-hard muscle and possibly a new jaw, of all things. Not that Tony could explain that to him.

He snuck a look at Steve.

Steve looked miserable.

“Steve,” Tony said. “Trust me. Those guys are full of shit.”

Steve furrowed his brow and looked up at Tony sharply. He started to say something, but then there was the shriek of metal against metal, and the station was flooded with the light of an incoming subway car.

“This is me,” was all Steve said, once the train had pulled up alongside the platform. “Goodbye—“

“It’s me too,” Tony said quickly. “I’m definitely going this way. Very definitely. What’s your stop? Mine is—the one after the other one? You know, with the platform that has all the tiles?”

“Most of the platforms have tiles,” Steve said. He shot Tony a strange look and stepped onto the train, which was crowded and painted a sickly green and had rotting wicker seating. Tony followed him, and Steve began pushing his way deeper into the train, deftly squeezing between a heavyset bearded man and a girl in a felt hat pinned with large yellow flowers. Over his shoulder, he said, “You don’t mean Prospect Park?”

“That’s the one,” Tony said. He tried his best to follow, but ended up nearly tripping over the man, who shot him a dirty look and shoved him onto the girl. She shrieked (unnecessarily, in Tony’s opinion) and smacked him with her handbag.

“That’s in the other direction,” Steve said. He paused momentarily and seemed to want to offer a hand – to him or the girl, Tony couldn’t tell – but then he shook his head slightly and went back to moving through the crowd.

“Oh,” Tony said. He didn’t think he could blame that faux pas on his age, but he had bigger things to worry about, as Steve was already being swallowed up in the crowd. Tony righted himself, apologized to the girl, and followed after Steve. He pushed his way past toughs smelling strongly of liquor and old women clutching bibles and young boys in yarmulkes, and, honestly, how could one train car hold so many people? Steve was having an easier time of it because of his size, but even he was occasionally faced with a space too small to squeeze through without offending a fellow passenger.

The train stopped suddenly and then lurched forward again before reaching the next station, and Steve effortlessly caught hold of a pole, narrowly avoiding a collision with an old man who was reading a newspaper covered in Cyrillic script. Tony didn’t know to look for a pole, and so he ended up smashing into Steve.

“Sorry.” Tony said, pushing himself off. He ignored the twinges of pain that radiated down his spine and he also ignored Steve’s aggravated glance, which probably had less to do with the fact that he’d crashed into Steve and more to do with how he was patting Steve over to make sure the collision hadn’t broken any bones. Tony had almost knocked him flat, and it had been something of a surprise to not feel a solid wall of muscle there, even though he’d known, intellectually, that this wasn’t the super soldier he was used to. It’s just that it was different to feel it: the light, narrow frame and the delicate, sharp ridge of Steve’s collarbone as Tony’s face smashed into it.

God – this Steve probably weighed, like, eighty pounds; Tony could have seriously injured him.

“Sorry, sorry. Steve, are you broken anywhere? Like, does it hurt?”

“You can stop touching me. I’ve survived worse,” Steve said wryly. “Shouldn’t you get off here and take the train going back to Prospect Park?”

“No, no,” Tony said. “Did I say Prospect Park? I meant the other station. The one that comes up before Manhattan or maybe Queens; you know which one I mean.”

“Before Manhattan or maybe Queens,” Steve said, as the train started up again.

“Yes,” Tony said. “With, um, the turnstiles. Where are you getting off again?”

“With turnstiles.”

“I definitely remember turnstiles,” Tony assured him.

“Like the turnstiles they have in every single station.”

“Exactly that kind,” Tony said. “Two or three or maybe four of them. I can’t remember.”

“Well, sure,” Steve said. “Lucky for you, just about every station in Brooklyn has somewhere between two and four.” He looked at Tony again, his expression unreadable, and pushed his way deeper into the train. Tony followed. Eventually Steve stopped, finding an empty seat near the back of the car right next to a very thin woman with a very fat, very smelly baby. The seats behind her were empty too (because whatever she fed that kid, it was enough to clear this side of the train), so Tony slid in behind Steve just as the train lurched again.

“So,” Steve said, without turning around. “I’m getting off at Carroll.”

“Really?” Tony said, leaning forward so that he was right between Steve and the woman with the baby. “What a—“

“Coincidence?” Steve said. “Let me guess: it’s your stop too.”

He didn’t sound pleased about that. Possibly he was onto Tony. Well, it wasn’t like that was entirely unexpected, given Tony’s inability to keep from showing his ignorance of all things 1941-and-Brooklyn-related, but it probably didn’t bode well for Tony’s plan to make himself likeable.

Not that it had been a particularly well-thought-out plan.

“Surprising, isn’t it?” Tony said, bravely soldiering on. “Out of all the subway stops in the great city of Brooklyn—“

“How did you know my name?” Steve said.

Okay. That was kind of unexpected.

“Your friend Bucky said it,” Tony said. “Sorry. Is it Binky? It’s Binky, isn’t it? His name is totally Binky.”

“It’s Bucky, and I meant before,” Steve said. “This morning, after we fought the Bund. You were saying all this stuff about paying me—“

“Are we reminiscing already?” Tony said. “That’s great. I love reminiscing. I remember you said that I was a drunk, which was spot-on, incidentally, so you really shouldn’t trust anything I sa—“

The woman with the baby stared at Tony, aghast.

“—and then you said my name. How did you know my name?”

“Did I say your name?” Tony said. “I’m pretty sure I said ‘sleeve.’”

“Sleeve,” Steve said slowly.

“…Yes?” Tony said, exhibiting that smooth prevarication that had always completely failed to impress Howard or Pepper or Rhodey and that, it seemed, had a similar non-effect on Steve. He really should have been better at this, only his genius ran more to engineering and a kind of bizarrely charming dickery that only ever impressed the people who didn’t really matter.

“Why would you say sleeve?”

“Because… I was tugging on yours?” Tony said. “And it seemed kind of baggy. And I worried that I’d ripped it?”

“Twice,” Steve said.

“Sorry – what?”

“You said it twice.”

“Sleeve? I did. I was very concerned with the integrity of your clothing,” Tony said. “I’d hate to, you know, cause your shirt any damage. It’s a very nice shirt. Where’d you get it?”

He squinted Steve’s shirt. It was cheap and clearly mass-produced and had a brownish stain near the collar that might have been blood and the whole thing hung rather sadly off of Steve’s frame purely thanks to the efforts of a battered black tie. He probably would have been doing Steve a favor if he had ripped it off. In fact, considering the number of times he’d ripped much nicer clothing off of Steve—

“You’re full of it,” Steve said flatly. “You _are_ following me, and I’m damned if I know why.” The woman with the baby gave a horrified gasp, so he added, “Sorry.”

“No, I’m not, and apology accepted,” Tony said.

“Not _you_ —“

“I’m not, and, seriously, is that shirt from Woolworth’s or something?” Tony continued, because sometimes Pepper and Rhodey, at least, had been worn down by sheer persistence on his part, so he figured he’d take the lie and run with it; it couldn’t hurt to try. “That’s a popular store here, right? I’m sure they sell shirts. They’re all old-fashioned and they have, like, lunch counters. I remember that. Racist lunch counters—“

The woman with the baby sniffed.

“Sorry,” Steve told her again. “He’s a drunk.”

“What are your thoughts on that, by the way?” Tony said, because he’d never asked Steve about this, because he didn’t think Steve was anything but a great guy, but, well, he was a great guy from the forties, so there was no guarantee he wasn’t also an ignorant guy. Lots of people thought Howard Stark was a great guy; that hadn’t stopped him posing with someone in blackface. And, for all that Steve had been talking about not turning his back on injustice, that was sort of just what people _did_ way back when, when it came to stuff like the lunch counters, wasn’t it?

The forties weren’t like the future, where—Okay. Well. Maybe the future wasn’t exactly perfect, either, but it was better than right now, in 1941, particularly since right now, in 1941, Steve was starting to look angry and Tony didn’t know how to fix it and everything around them smelled, so it wasn’t like Tony could make it _worse_.

“Not the drinking,” Tony continued, “You disapprove, everybody disapproves, even I disapprove. That’s old news. The racist lunch counter thing.”

“Could you please sit with your friend?” the woman snapped.

“He’s not exactly my friend,” Steve said. “I barely know him. And sorry. Again.”

“If you barely know him—“

“I mean, obviously you’re not a bigot or anything,” Tony said, ignoring her, “But you are a product of, er, where you’re from. Which is here, and I hate to be a jerk, but here kind of sucks—“

The baby farted and began to cry, and the woman, possibly to avenge herself on them for making her an unwilling party to this conversation, shifted her child as close as she possibly could to Steve and Tony.

Which, Tony had to admit, made her a terrible mother, because who on earth shoved their kid next to a self-admitted drunk? It was official; he didn’t feel bad for her. Not that he had in the first place.

“Sorry,” Steve said again, as though unremitting apologies would cover up the wailing and the rancid smell of a stinky baby. Then he turned to Tony and hissed, “If you hate to be a jerk, then _stop acting like a jerk_.”

The train lurched again and pulled into the next stop, and the woman gave them a final, appalled look, secured her smelly child, and left the train. Tony took this as a sign to grab the seat next to Steve.

“So—“ Tony began.

“First of all,” Steve snapped, as the train began to move again, “Brooklyn does _not_ suck. Second of all, I think freedom of association can’t hold up against basic fairness, especially when it restricts the freedom of other people. Third of all, I have no idea what that has to do with Woolworth’s specifically. Fourth of all, I think we shouldn’t swear in front of babies, and I’m ashamed of myself and I’m ashamed for you, and, fifth of all, why are you following me?”

“I like you,” Tony said simply.

“You don’t know me!” Steve said.

“Wrong,” Tony said. “I know you aren’t intimidated by a bunch of creeps with swastikas on their arms, even if just one of them is, like, four times bigger than you are and you’re going up against three of them. I know you don’t take crap from anybody, not somebody you just met, not even your best friend. I know you’ve got balls, trying to sign up before this war even starts. I know you have it in you to be a soldier, no matter what some army recruiter says. What’s not to like?”

Steve was silent for a moment. He clasped his hands in his lap and took a slow, careful breath.

Then he said, “That’s the most lame-brained thing I’ve ever heard.”


	6. Chapter 6

Unfortunately, that was just about the most earnest speech Tony had ever given in his entire life and he had no idea what to say now that Steve wasn’t taking it at face value. He tried a sputtering “What?” and also an “It’s true!” and a “Steve, you’re—“ before Steve interrupted him, annoyed, and said, “Oh, come on, you can’t be serious.“

“Honestly, I—“

“Is this some kind of trick? Find yourself a little guy and see what it takes to push his buttons?”

“Of course not!”

“I mean, I get that I’m not the most impressive guy in the world,” Steve continued, “That doesn’t mean I like people making fun of me.”

“I’m not! Christ, can’t I just say nice things—“

“No,” Steve said. His brusqueness caught the attention of an old woman taking a seat across the aisle. She shot them a concerned look, but Steve didn’t notice. He continued with, “That was biggest line I’ve ever heard. If this is just you trying to start a fight, then you picked the right guy. I may be—“

“I’m not trying to fight you!” Tony said, keeping his eye on a pair of seedy-looking young men who were making their way to the seats directly behind them. Tony could swear he saw their ears prick up at the word ‘fight.’ “I’m trying to compliment you.“

“Don’t need it,” Steve said firmly. One of the young men chuckled, but the old woman gave Tony a sympathetic look. Well. At least she understood. And Tony wasn’t even going to think about how very weird it was that he was accepting comfort from someone who reeked of mothballs (at least it was chasing away the remaining baby odor) and who’d probably been born during the Civil War.

“No, Steve, listen—“

“No, you listen. It’s—I appreciate people saying they like me, okay? But coming from a total stranger? Be serious.”

“I don’t get more serious than this, Steve,” Tony said.

Steve stared at him. “I don’t understand, then. Is this your revenge on the scrawny jerk whose friend knocked you flat? Because I said I was sorry about that, and I am, but you’re taking it a little bit far—“

“No!” Tony said. Honestly, Tony just liked the guy. Why was that so hard to process? Maybe this Steve possessed a naturally belligerent Brooklyn mindset, and could only explain odd behavior through aggression. This was concerning. How had Tony never noticed this about him before? Possibly Tony’s Steve had mellowed thanks to age and experience and decades buried beneath an ice cap thousands of miles away from Brooklyn. That had to be it. People probably became nicer and saner the further removed they were from Brooklyn. Tony made a mental note to keep _his_ Steve away from his hometown as much as possible. “This isn’t about revenge, or about fighting, Steve. This is about you—“

He broke off because the old woman had leaned forward and now looked like she was about to give Tony a comforting pat on the shoulder. This was absolutely the last thing Tony wanted, since he was in a terrible mood as it was and he didn’t like random petting from the elderly at the best of times and also because she appeared to be between seventy and eleven million years old, so one small slip-up while leaning forward on a moving train car could actually kill her, and Tony really didn’t want to be responsible for that. He shook his head warningly and made swift “x” motions with his hands, so she moved back against her seat and settled for sending him pitying looks. Tony was momentarily relieved, until he heard one of the young men seated behind them burst into muffled laughter and mutter something about _guys who need their grannies to fight for ‘em._

Thankfully, Steve was apparently too aggravated by Tony to take note of any of this.

“Look,” Steve said, “Out of all the guys in Brooklyn, why’d you decide to be such a fan of me? Can you just tell me that, even if you won’t give me a straight answer otherwise?”

Across from them, the old woman nodded in agreement, as though she were part of the conversation, and one of the young men whistled and said, “You tell him, short stuff!” this time loud enough for Steve to hear. He turned around in his seat and said, “Stay out of it, will you?”

“You got it, Tiny,” was the reply, and Steve paused, annoyed. For a moment, Tony thought he was going to retort (and, hey, Tony kind of wanted him to. That guy was clearly a prime example of Typical Brooklyn Asshole, a subset of the population that Tony was already identifying all-too-expertly), but eventually he settled for turning back around as though the man hadn’t spoken. Apparently dealing with Tony was hassle enough.

“I gave you the straightest answer I’ve ever given anybody,” Tony said, once he had Steve’s attention again. “Believe me. You’re scrawny, but who’s to say that you will be forever? And, no matter what your size is, I know you’re—”

“Oh, don’t you ever quit?” Steve said. “ _You don’t know me_. And I don’t know you, and—”

“What does that matter?” Tony said, frustrated. Tony Stark did not, generally, have a hard time getting familiar with people. Who cared if he didn’t know them? They always knew him. Only most of the time those were people he didn’t really care to know one way or another. Steve was a different story. Steve meant something. So why couldn’t Tony let him know that?

Not the big stuff, obviously. Tony couldn’t tell him anything that might screw with the future: the details of Steve’s transformation, and his wartime exploits, and his assumed death. And it wasn’t like Steve would believe him about any of that, just like he probably wouldn’t buy it if Tony went on to explain how he’d wake up and meet Tony and hate Tony and then warm up to Tony and then befriend Tony and how somehow that would turn into him dating Tony and then _sleeping with_ Tony and—

Okay. So the Tony stuff was out. Obviously. Even if that’s what Tony felt mattered most. And, really, making it directly about this Steve seemed to enflame his innate Brooklyn pugnacity. So maybe Tony should talk about Cap instead.

“Look, Steve,” Tony said, “When I was a kid, there was this war hero I really looked up to. He was all about, you know, American values of justice and fairness and freedom. Doing right. Looking out for your neighbors. Voting. All that corny stuff that you buy into as a kid, even if eventually you think it’s all crap and you’re too smart to bother with it—“

Steve stared at him, horrified. “Voting is important!” he said, “And who do you know who just stops looking out for their neighbors? And freedom and fairness aren't—“

“I know!” Tony said, “Just listen, okay? Because the point is, even though there were all these hokey and cheesy sides to him, he was also solid and intractable and good. That’s what’s at the heart of those concepts, right? Freedom and fairness and justice and, uh, I guess even neighbors and voting, sometimes—“

Tony didn’t quite get why he’d brought in the neighbors and the voting. Whatever. He was on a roll; he wasn’t going to stop now.

“—they’re overused to the point of seeming lame and weak, but that doesn’t mean they’re not valuable. At heart, we need them. Even if they don’t sound tough, they still mean something. They can still stand for solid, unwavering good. You can be like that. Even if you don’t seem tough, you still have that necessary element there, which is—“

“You like me because I don’t seem tough.” Steve said.

“—The capacity to stand firm and do the right thing,” Tony finished. Because it was a grand finish, a finish worthy of Captain America (and therefore kind of a corny finish, but, hey, Tony was still glad that he’d pulled it off), he only belatedly responded to Steve with a half-thought-out, “Yes, exactly.”

“Because I’m hokey and cheesy,” Steve said slowly.

“Right,” Tony said.

“Because I seem lame and weak,” Steve said.

“Of cour—Wait!” Tony said. He was done admiring his speech by this point, and was now more fully caught up to Steve’s end of the conversation. “No! Because underneath the weakness, there’s something good—“

“And also you don’t like voting, and it’s possible that you hate your neighbors,” Steve said. “I don’t think I’m going to talk to you anymore. I think this conversation is over.”

“No!” Tony said, “Steve, listen to me.”

Steve crossed his arms over his chest and stared straight ahead, right into the space currently occupied by the old woman. She sighed and shook her head sadly at the both of them. Weirdly enough, she seemed disappointed in Tony. Even weirder: Tony was kind of disappointed that she was disappointed in him. Weirdest of all, he was disappointed in himself. He was trying; he really was. It was just that even his best tries seemed to fall short of doing anything but insulting Steve.

“Steve,” Tony said, “Steve, I didn’t mean to offend you.”

Steve bit his bottom lip and very stubbornly refused to answer.

“Steve,” Tony said again, and then once more, and then again, and he assured himself that he’d done his very best to not make that last one sound too much like ‘Steeeeeeeeeeeeeeeve,’ because that sort of thing was understandably annoying. This restraint accomplished nothing. Steve, inexplicably, appeared to be annoyed.

“St—“ he began again, but then the old woman said, “Oh, dear, that’s not the way,” and one of the guys behind them said, “You’re laying it on kind of thick, pal,” so Tony smiled at the old woman and flipped the guy the bird and decided it was time to try a different tactic.

“Fine,” he said to Steve. “That makes sense. I really don’t know you, and obviously you don’t know me or you’d know that I have nothing against my neighbors.” (This was true, because Tony didn’t know who his neighbors were and suspected that he didn’t actually have neighbors. He supposed that wherever it was his property came to an end someone else had to be there, owning the property right alongside it. Logically speaking. He’d just never bothered to think about it before.) “And I guess I was being kind of insulting—“

Steve snorted at that, but Tony continued gamely, “And you don’t know me, so how can you trust what I’m saying?” He held a hand out to Steve. “So let’s get to know each other, then. Tony St—Carbonell, like I said.”

Steve stared at Tony’s hand bewilderingly. Tony stubbornly kept it outstretched. Steve stared some more. Tony did not put it down. Steve kept on staring. Tony snuck a look at the old woman. He’d been hoping she’d intervene with some support or something, since she was so enraptured by their conversation, but she didn’t seem to be doing anything except watching with open curiosity. Tony snuck a look back at Steve (who was still staring) and another back at the old woman, and had very nearly decided to put his hand back down when the old woman coughed loudly and said, “You’re not being very polite, dear.”

Steve blushed.

Jackpot.

“Has he actually done anything to upset you?” said the old woman.

“Well,” Steve began, “No, ma’am, not exactly. But—“

“Because it seems to me that you have no business being so rude,” the old woman continued admonishingly. She looked expectantly at Steve over the rim of her glasses and gestured at Tony’s outstretched hand. Steve’s blush deepened.

Tony decided that he liked her.

“Yeah,” said one of the guys behind them, “Maybe he comes off like a bum—“

“Stay out of it,” Tony said, nearly-snarling. He dropped his hand and turned to glare at the speaker, giving him full view of Tony’s bandaged jaw and unkempt hair.

“—But he could be alright,” the guy finished weakly. “Wait. Never mind. Maybe he’s crazy.”

“You never know who could be crazy,” said the other guy.

“Thank you, but I think I can figure this out for myself,” Steve told the men, the old woman, and a few additional bystanders who’d trickled down to their end of the car as soon as they’d sensed that something potentially exciting was happening. They’d heard Steve mention fighting, probably. Brooklynites seemed to enjoy fighting.

“Now that you mention it, he _does_ look dangerous,” said the old woman, as though Steve hadn’t spoken.

Great. There went Tony’s only ally.

“Yeah, don’t shake it. Who introduces themselves to people they meet on the subway, anyway?” said the first guy. “Crazy people. ”

“You did. That’s how I met you,” said the second. “I think you should shake it.”

“Okay, seriously,” Steve said, “I don’t need any advice. I’ve got this under contr—“

“Oh, no, dear,” said the old woman, and then, because she really was as faithless as she was old, “I’ve changed my mind; don’t shake it.”

“Well, I’m not going to put my hand down until he shakes it,” Tony snapped.

“Well, I will _admonish_ you until you put your hand down,” said the old woman, sniffing.

“Admonish ‘em both until the little guy shakes it,” said the second guy, leaning forward and giving Steve a hard look. He was clearly far too caught up in these proceedings, but he was on Tony’s side, so that was something, at least.

By this point, even more passengers had migrated to their side of the train and were staring with open curiosity, so Steve gave them all a panicked look and said, “Fine! I’ll shake it.” He took Tony’s hand and gave it a weak shake, ostensibly just to shut them all up.

“That’s nice,” said the old woman, back on Tony’s team for the moment. “Never mind. I’m glad you did that. Aren’t you going to introduce yourself now?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Steve said, with no small amount of dignity, “But, after that, the last thing I want is for any of you to know my full name.”

She started to say something again—probably something admonishing— but by then the train was pulling into another station and Steve was shooting a relieved look at the green and white lettered tiles that whirred past the windows. When the train came to stop, Tony could see that the tiles read, **CARROLL STREET**. Steve was at the doors and out on the platform in seconds, and Tony darted after him, pausing only to give a halfhearted wave to all of the passengers staring after them with naked interest. He called after Steve, but Steve didn’t slow down, so Tony followed him onto the platform and up a flight of stairs, and then through a pair of turnstiles (just the two in this station, it seemed), up another flight of stairs, and finally out onto the street, where Steve finally whirled around and faced him, fists balled in the pockets of his overcoat.

“What is your _problem_?” Steve said.

Yeah. Tony had probably messed that up.

“Look,” Tony said, over the far-off yelping of a wounded animal (maybe a dog or maybe a man, Tony couldn’t tell), “I’m sorry. I know I made kind of a scene in there.”

“Kind of a scene?” Steve said, “Buddy, I don’t want to know what it takes to make an actual scene in your book, but—“

Tony held his hands up plaintively. “Steve, you won’t see me again after tonight. I promise. But just let me—“

“ _Good_ ,” Steve said. “I don’t get it. You don’t want a fight, but you start spewing nonsense. You say isn’t some kind of revenge, but then you—“

“I’m glad I met you,” Tony said quickly, because Steve was already starting to turn away. “I’ll always be glad. And I wasn’t lying about anything I said; I really think you have that solid goodness. You have what it takes to be a hero, Steve. I know it.”

Steve blinked once, incredulously, and opened his mouth to say something. Then he closed it again. After a moment, he said, “I don’t want a fan club. Just leave me alone, okay?”

“Right,” Tony said tightly.

He was going to leave it at that. He really was. Only—this couldn’t be how it ended, could it? Not on this dingy, cracked pavement, surrounded by the faint smell of garbage and the increasingly perturbing yelps that cut through the night silence.

Well. It wasn’t like Tony had been planning on staying, anyway. And, even if it was disheartening to find Steve Rogers in 1941 only to end up pissing him off, it wasn’t like Tony was surprised. Tony didn’t work well with others, not even – no, _especially_ —when he was trying to. He just wished he and this Steve were parting on better terms, that was all. It was going to suck, looking at his Steve and knowing that, were it not for being out of his time and place, he probably wouldn’t have very much use for Tony.

Hell, that sucked right _now_ , never mind how Tony would feel about it in the future. That sucked enough that Tony kind of wanted to take off for a liquor store (and, in a neighborhood like this, there were bound to be tons of liquor stores, especially the seedy kind with the yellow neon signs and all the drunks passed out in front. Hooray. Tony’s favorite) and just drink himself into a stupor, and he’d been pretty good about that lately. He hadn’t thought anything could push him back over the edge, but, hey, Steve always exceeded expectations.

So Tony just moved to let Steve pass, and that’s when they heard the yelp again, and Steve stopped abruptly, looking around for the source of the yelping.

Come to think of it, that hadn’t been a yelp.

It was more like a scream.

Tony strolled up cautiously to face Steve again and said, “Is that a—“

And Steve said, “—dame?”

And Tony said, “Yeah, or a kid,” because that’s what it sounded like to him.

One look at Steve, however, told him that this was the wrong thing to say. There was something in Steve’s demeanor now, something uncompromising and determined that Tony knew all-too-well, and usually it that meant Steve was going to do something that Tony would regret now and admire later, or admire now and regret later, or possibly just regret (with a tinge – just a tinge, mind—of admiration. Because Tony was a fanboy like that). With his Steve, a turn of events like this could be maddening. With this Steve, who was roughly four hundred times smaller than his Steve and also an asthmatic smoker, it was downright terrifying.

Tony caught his arm before he could move away, afraid Steve would do something stupid.

“What are you doing? I have to go help!” Steve said, struggling to pull his skinny forearm out of Tony’s grasp and thereby legitimizing Tony’s fears.

“Now? Here?” Tony said. He looked warily around at the filthy street, at its uneven composition of tenements and narrow brownstones. There was no curlicue ironwork and no impressive masonry in this neighborhood, only the garbage-strewn sidewalk and flickering streetlamps that rose from beds of shattered glass. Tattered forms, reeking of cheap spirits, lay passed out on several of the nearby stoops. Tony thought of Steve’s frail shoulders and thin wrists, and then he looked again at Steve’s resolute face he tried to pull away.

Well. Common sense told Tony that letting Steve run off by himself wouldn’t be a good idea. But he couldn’t keep Steve from helping, either. That impulse to help was exactly the solid, intractable good Tony had been referring to earlier. If Steve had let him get a word in edgewise, Tony’s little speech about his childhood hero might have ended with some stirring recollection of a time his Steve refused to turn his back on someone in need. So it wasn’t like Tony could keep him from doing so right now, even if he did think this Steve was more likely to get himself killed than to offer any concrete aid.

In the end, Tony sighed and said, “Yeah, fine. Just let me help you, okay?”

“ _Why_? Why do y—” Steve started to say, but then they heard the screaming again, and he settled for, “You know what? Never mind. Suit yourself.” Tony let him wrench himself free, and, with that, Steve was off at a run.

Tony followed at his heels, his still-sore muscles protesting slightly. But only slightly. Steve couldn’t actually run that fast.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This went on unexpected hiatus, so I owe apologies all around, but especially to those of you who inquired about this only to receive the news that this was already written and that it was only a quick edit away from being posted. When I said edit? I meant more like total rewrite because the first draft was awful. Ha. Ha. Ha. I suck. Sorry. Have an extra-long chapter (with indirect nods to Terry Pratchett and Jules Feiffer, for those who are into that sort of thing) to make up for it.
> 
> Also, no teenagers were harmed in the making of this. Because they're good kids, really. They love their grandmas, and they love Brooklyn. They love Brooklyn a lot. They are not going to take your smack talk about Brooklyn, ok?

It was stupid to fight. Stupider to let Steve go it alone, but still. Tony should’ve known better than to get wrapped up in some senseless street brawl. He kept a running list of all the problems they encountered: Steve was small; they were outnumbered; Tony’s body still ached; Steve wasn’t very strong; Tony was exhausted; Steve didn’t seem to understand what a bad idea this was; Steve kept falling over– and Tony, distracted by the fight, couldn’t always tell if it had been a punch that had done him in, or just a particularly strong breeze. Never mind that their only reason for being in this mess was a decidedly adult, decidedly male individual whose only talent was to clutch uselessly at his side and also to approximate the vocal range of a castrato. 

”I’m not saying that we should let these creeps beat the snot out of him,” Tony said, “But he’s not much of a kid.”

Steve, only just managing to avoid being splattered all over the pavement, said, “Yeah, I can see that.” 

Tony said, ”He’s not a woman, either.” 

Steve said, ”He’s outnumbered. I know what that’s like.” 

So Tony felt contrite for approximately half a second, which was about as long as it took for the guy they were rescuing to notice that he wasn’t alone, and to decide that this was the best possible moment to run away. Which he did. Successfully. Because Steve and Tony were now conveniently distracting his attackers. 

And Tony was tired and hungry and in pain, and, by now, spectacularly pissed off, so he muttered, “I hate Brooklyn.” 

Intellectually, he’d known this was the wrong thing to say while fighting Brooklyn residents in Brooklyn on behalf of the toughest little Brooklynite of them all. But he still said it. 

Whoops.

Steve stopped. The guy who’d been about to smash Steve’s head into a lamppost stopped. So did the guys who’d been attempting to knock out all of Tony’s teeth, possibly to string them together to form artisanal friendship bracelets or something. Or maybe that craze hadn’t come to Brooklyn yet. Whatever.

“Is that so?” said one of the aspirational tooth-collectors. He made a fist and smacked it against his open palm, which was a corny gesture, but also effective in that it showed off his menacingly muscled forearms. Or, at least, Tony would have been successfully menaced had he taken sufficient notice of all the muscles. Mainly it was the tattoos that caught his attention: a blonde pinup with a face like Mr. Rogers, what looked like a melted horse but was apparently named Fido, and a sappy red heart that declared undying love to Nonna.

Christ, how old was this guy? 

“You come here and think you can tell us that?” said one of the others. He had a voice that was far too reedy for his large frame, and also pimples. 

They were kids. 

Tony didn’t quite know what to make of that. _Steve_ was sort of a kid, too, but there was something about him – how tired he looked and how fed up he’d gotten, maybe, or maybe just that Tony would know him in the future, because Steve generally didn’t act like that; that wasn’t Captain America behavior – that made him seem older. Maybe he was older. Maybe these really were just (large, menacing, impossibly violent) teenagers. Because if something like the Nonna tattoo didn’t signal that you were a big, fat baby underneath it all, then Tony didn’t know what did. 

So that was another problem. They now wanted to pound him into the pavement more than ever, but he wasn’t sure how much damage he could ethically dish out to people roughly twenty years his junior, and making rude comments about people’s hometowns was probably asking for it (never mind how horrified Steve had looked after that little disclosure), only Tony hadn’t asked for this fight in the first place, and—

Well. At least they’d begun laying off Steve. It wasn’t the greatest consolation in the world, what with how determined they all were to make mincemeat of He Who Had Offended Noble Brooklyn, but things could have been worse. Tony had survived terrorists; he could take being beaten up by a couple of teenagers. Even if their punches hurt. A lot. 

But they would have hurt Steve worse. So maybe Tony’s presence made a difference after all. It was still a stupid, senseless street brawl, but it wasn’t stupid to fight. He was fighting for Steve. After all, it wasn’t Steve’s skull that was being knocked into the lamppost. 

It was Tony’s. 

So. 

Yeah. There was a bright side to every situation. 

“Hey!” Steve said. “Back off!” 

Out of the corner of his (admittedly hazy) vision, Tony could see him slinging punches. They were mostly ineffectual punches, although they did manage to re-engage the largest and toughest of the teenage meatheads, the one who could probably spare two minutes to grind all of Steve’s frail bones into fine motes of dust. 

Great.

“No!” Tony said hastily. “Steve, I’ve got this!” 

Steve ignored him. Tony decided to try reasoning with the goons instead. 

“Don’t— He’s just a – he’s a Brooklyn guy, like you! I’m from—”

Christ. What place did Brooklynites hate most? 

“I knew it! The Bronx, right?” said the one that had been about to harm Steve, just as the one attempting to twist Tony’s arm said, “Queens. That’s where all you jerks are from,” and the one who’d bashed Tony’s head into a lamppost said, “Just another Jersey shmuck, huh?” 

So. Apparently Brooklynites hated _all_ places that weren’t Brooklyn. That was…unsurprising. 

They closed in on Tony, but suddenly Steve was there, stalwart and tiny, with his fists upraised. 

“It doesn’t matter where he’s from,” Steve said. “He’s just one person, and you’re—“

“You heard what he said!”

Steve swallowed once, hard, and Tony got the impression that he was making an admission he would really rather avoid. “He—he has a right to not like it here.”

Two of the goons audibly gasped. Tony hadn’t done that since he was six years old, when Howard had casually let slip that Santa was really the nanny. So clearly Tony really was being beaten up by a bunch of children. And defended by his tiny, soon-to-be-horribly-maimed boyfriend. 

This situation wasn’t just bad. It was downright embarrassing.

“I mean,” Steve said quickly. “I don’t know why he _wouldn’t_ like it here, but he’s got a right to his opinion.”

There was silence for a moment. 

The biggest guy leveled a punch at Steve that knocked him into the alley wall. Tony scrambled to help him up. 

“I told you I had it!” Tony said. 

“No, you didn’t,” Steve said, wheezing slightly, “You were hardly fighting back!”

“They are _children_ ,” Tony pointed out. 

The goons didn’t take too kindly to that. Cue another round of aiming for Tony’s teeth.

“Is that why they’re kicking you around?” Steve said, hauling him upright again, “Because it looks like some kind of staged fight—“

“Right,” Tony said, not quite knowing where Steve was heading with this, but going with it anyway, “And you should leave it to me, because theatrical choreography is actually a very safe—“ 

“—With _you_ watching from the audience!” 

This was completely unjust. Tony had only been trying to help him. And it wasn’t like Steve was such a fabulous fighter himself. He seemed to know instinctively that upraised fists played a role, sure, but he hardly ever got to the point of actually using those fists. Probably because people kept knocking him over. 

He also fought with scrupulous fairness, which – well, it wasn’t like Tony could talk, since he’d just been worrying (apparently needlessly) over the ethics of beating up teenagers. But Tony’s fairness came from maturity and wisdom and the deep-seated notion that middle-aged billionaires shouldn’t be bouncing around Brooklyn picking fights with kids who couldn’t even afford decent tattoo work. Steve’s fairness was more like what you learned from those books with illustrations of burly men mustachioed men in high-waisted trousers facing off against burlier men mustachioed men in antique thermal underwear. It was a fairness born of the dedicated study of fighting like a good man, of ensuring that you never hit an opponent anywhere dishonorable, let alone anywhere it might actually hurt. 

And Tony could appreciate that, knowing, as he did, that Steve Rogers fought by his own rules, and that those rules went something like Try To Avoid Killing Your Foes and Be The Better Man and Fight To Defend; Not To Hurt. But those rules made more sense when one was Captain America, Super Soldier (who, it had to be said, sometimes caved on his personal rules, because he’d faced off against Nazis and aliens and all kinds of crazy shit, and so he had experience and was also not young and completely stupid). 

This Steve Rogers? 

He was getting _creamed._

And he was getting creamed for no reason, too, because, once Tony had gotten over his brief spurt of morality (quite easy to do, once these punks had resumed beating up on his boyfriend), he’d started to take note of little things like how the goon with the tattoos never bothered to defend properly, and how the biggest one leaned a little on his right knee, like there was something wrong with the left one. 

Tony made sure to aim for the left one. Sure, Happy said that moves like that weren’t kosher. But that was in the land of normal people. This was not that land. This was 1941. This was Brooklyn. 

“Just get him right there,” Tony advised Steve, who was facing off against the third goon, “Where he’s vulnerable.” 

“What—no!” Steve said. 

“He’s not even defending properly, look—“

“That’s fighting dirty—“

“Just one punch,” Tony said.

“No! That’s not right.”

“Right there in the crotch—“

“ _No_.” 

Apparently this Steve also had a rule that went something like No Crotch-Punching Even If It Looks Like He’s Going To Crack Open Your Skull And Scoop Out Your Brains And Use The Two Halves Of Your Tiny Cranium As Mittens For His Meaty Hands. 

Truly, he did not seem to comprehend how very petite and defenseless he was. 

Not even when a teenager managed to kick him into a row of trash cans without breaking a sweat.

“Don’t tell me that people don’t fight dirty here,” Tony snapped, rescuing Steve from the trash cans and elbowing the teenager in the face and feeling only the tiniest of moral qualms over it. “People clearly fight dirty here all the time.”

Steve said, “What do you mean, ‘here’?”

“Brooklyn!” Tony said, although he would have thought that was evident. 

“Brookly—“ Steve said, “I—How could— _What is wrong with you?_ ” 

Then the guy he’d been fighting took advantage of this distracted hometown defensiveness to knock him over again. So Tony grabbed the meaty, tattooed forearm, pulled the guy forward, and took similar advantage of the whole vulnerable crotch situation. Their opponent went down, howling, to join his cronies on the pavement. Tony stared at them for a moment. They did not seem inclined to get back up again. 

Obviously, fighting dirty was the way to go. 

“Come on,” Tony said, helping Steve up. “We’re done.” He dragged Steve down the street, leaving the beaten teenagers behind. He still felt that tiny moral qualm. But that didn’t keep him from sending plenty of threatening glances backwards, just to make sure that no one would get up and attempt pursuit.

Ethics were important, sure. But so was getting Steve out of there. Even Steve seemed to agree to some degree, since he kept silent for two whole blocks. On the third, however, he shook Tony off and stopped short. 

“What was that?” he said.

“A…fight?” Tony said. It had seemed pretty obvious to him, even if it had been ill-advised and somewhat immoral and undoubtedly not his best performance. 

Steve stared at him. 

Tony stared back. Steve’s hat had been knocked off and abandoned in the fight, and there was a bruise forming beneath his right eye, and his hair and clothes were mussed. He looked like someone who’d had his ass handed to him, and he very nearly had been that someone. He’d certainly been banged around plenty, and—

Oh god. Did his eyes look slightly glassy? Because he was still staring bemusedly at Tony, and he had taken a lot of hits, including that really nasty one right after he’d stood up for Tony, and what if that had been one hit too many? What if he had a concussion or something? What if there was internal bleeding? What if his brain had been banged around so much that he was already starting to forget basic details?

“Quick, what’s your name?” Tony demanded. “Tell me your name.”

“Why would I?” Steve said irritably. “You already _know_.” 

Okay. So probably just a low-level concussion, then. And he hadn’t seemed to lose consciousness or anything, so he would probably be fine. Of course, it was best to do a CT scan to be sure, but who even knew where you got one of those in 1941, so—

“You taunted those guys,” Steve said slowly, “And then you fought dirty—you—what you did to that guy was—“

“No, no,” Tony said, “Well, yes to the last thing. But no taunting intended. Just observations on the neighborhood. Admittedly, I’m a born critic, but Brooklyn has been less than impressive, and – yeah, okay, sorry. Stop glaring. I get that you love it here, and I have to acknowledge the dirty fighting, but I’m pretty sure that just confirms that I had the fight under control—“

“You didn’t,” Steve said, “Because you weren’t fighting back. Ten minutes ago, you didn’t even want to—“

“Ten minutes ago, nobody was trying to paint the alley with your insides, Steve!” Tony said. 

Steve opened his mouth, and then he closed it again. Then he opened it a second time, and said, “So you fight when they’re kicking me around.”

Tony wasn’t sure he should qualify that with an answer. He’d thought that was obvious.

“But you don’t fight when they’re kicking _you_ around,” Steve said. “Actually, when it’s just you, you can’t defend yourself at all.”

“Won’t,” Tony said, “Wouldn’t. It was a case of ethics. Brief case this time. Very brief. I try to encourage those when they hit me, though, since…Well, it’s personal, really—“

“And then you swore you had the fight under control,” Steve said. “And you wouldn’t accept that I could’ve helped—“

“This puts us in a pot-kettle situation,” Tony said, “You can’t get mad at me over a pot-kettle situation. Well, I guess you can, but—“

“—But then you finish it by fighting dirty!”

“In my defense,” Tony began.

“ _Don’t_ say it’s Brooklyn’s fault,” Steve said. 

Tony held his hands up. “No. No, it’s not. No more cracks at Brooklyn; it’s my fault. I didn’t want to fight a bunch of kids, but I didn’t want to see you get hurt, either. I told you, you remind me of somebody.”

“Some war hero,” Steve said slowly. 

Tony nodded. 

“Well,” Steve said. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Yeah,” Tony said, “I know—“

“But thank you.” 

“But this guy was really important to me, like something of a personal hero, and I guess I feel like I owe to him to help you, so really it’s like I kind of owe it to you, but…” 

Tony stopped. 

“What?”

“Really thank you this time,” Steve said. “Though it doesn’t mean much if I keep acting like such a jerk, I guess.” 

Tony blinked at him. He…really hadn’t been expecting that. What was he supposed to say to that? What did people say when their miniaturized, possibly-concussed, curmudgeonly future boyfriends thanked them?

Oh, right.

“You’re welcome,” Tony said slowly. 

Steve ran a hand through his hair and offered him a weak smile. “Look: I don’t understand you. But I feel like I owe you, Tony. Like I should help you somehow.”

“No,” Tony said, “You’ve, um—I didn’t do it for a reward. And you haven’t been a jerk. You’re clearly just a naturally cautious person, which makes sense; I mean, you probably have to be cautious around here—“

One look at Steve’s face cut him off. 

“Sorry,” Tony said, “I’ll stop. I’m a jerk, too, okay? So it’s not a big deal. Don’t feel like you owe me.“ Seriously, he’d spent all night following Steve around and making a fool of him on the subway. And then he’d been rude about Brooklyn, and Steve had still defended him in front of those teenage goons. Steve didn’t owe him anything. And how much of a creep would it make him if he let Steve think that he did?

“You helped me back there,” Tony said, gesturing back at where they’d left the goons, “So we’re square.”

“But—“

“Plus, I don’t like Brooklyn, and I embarrass you, and I follow you to your friend’s place, and onto the train and into a fight – for the record: just to make sure that you’re okay – but it’s still pretty bizarre behavior when you think about it. I mean, most people would be pretty uncomfortable with that, given that we don’t know each other—“

“Yes,” Steve said evenly. 

“But—oh,” Tony said. “Alright then.”

“And you didn’t have to do any of that,” Steve added, “I would’ve been fine. I always am. And the way you’ve acted—“

“Is incomprehensible,” Tony said uncomfortably, “Right. No, I get it. You don’t know me, and I don’t know you—“

“—I’m not sure I deserve it,” Steve said.

“Right. Sorry. I get it. Probably nobody deserves some crazy bum following them around—“

“I mean,” Steve said, sighing, “That it’s better than I deserve.” 

“Sorry,” Tony said, “…What?” 

That was the second time in as many minutes that Steve had surprised him. God. The kid was on a roll. Or Tony had been here for so long that he was starting to forget what basic kindness and understanding looked like. Either one. 

“We’ve both acted like jerks,” Steve said, “But, jerk or not, you helped me out tonight.”

“I was only doing what you did,” Tony said. “For me. For that guy who was getting beaten up earlier—“

“You had no way of knowing I would really help either of you when you took on that fight,” Steve said, shaking his head. “Sure. I remind you of somebody. But that doesn’t mean anything. I haven’t acted like a war hero, or any—“ Here he made a face, “Any kind of hero. Not to you, at least.” 

Tony didn’t quite know how to navigate this conversation. He didn’t really know how to navigate _any_ conversation with this Steve, to be honest. First Steve hated him, and then he sort-of didn’t mind him, and then he was embarrassed by him, and then he was ready to run off and fight _without_ him – honestly, like this Steve could get through a fight for five minutes by himself – and now he was grateful. Somewhat reprimanding and genuinely regretful and thoroughly grateful. Reprimandingly, regretfully grateful.

Was that even an emotion? 

Tony hadn’t been prepared for this. His Steve was straightforward. _Cap_ was straightforward: who on earth could believe that the old-fashioned comic-book hero, the hokey symbol of all-American values, could be anything other than an open book? Only this Steve wasn’t an open book. This Steve was terribly complicated.

(And maybe, said a small voice in the back of his, maybe his Steve was just as complicated, and Tony, who could be blind about the most important things, just hadn’t bothered to see it before. 

But it was late and Tony was tired, so he ignored that voice for the time being.)

“What are you getting at?” Tony asked cautiously. 

Steve took a deep breath. “I—Do you have a place to stay tonight?”

Tony ran that over in his head a few times. Thirty minutes ago, Steve was ready to tell Tony to go jump in the East River, and now he wanted to take Tony home? Scratch the complicated thing. Steve wasn’t complicated. Steve was beyond complicated: Steve was downright unfathomable. 

But…surely this didn’t mean—

No. Of course not. 

Steve couldn’t possibly like him. Tony had behaved like a crazy person, and people didn’t usually like crazy people. 

Of course, people didn’t usually invite people they hated into their homes, so maybe this did mean that that he liked Tony now? Possibly? Maybe just a little bit?

“I owe you,” Steve continued. “I haven’t treated you well, and you look like maybe you’re—“

“Not such a bad guy?” Tony said. 

“—homeless,” Steve finished. 

Oh.

“But that too,” Steve said. “Because you aren’t.”

“Homeless?”

“Such a bad guy!”

“So,” Tony said carefully, “You don’t hate me?”

Steve shrugged. “You’re alright in my book,” he said. 

Tony could work with that. 

“So are you coming?” Steve said, “My place is this way.” 

Was Tony coming? 

Tony was _absolutely_ coming. Definitely. Without a doubt. With a skip in his step, even. Though, upon reflection, after that business with the generator and getting beaten up by those teenagers, any kind of literal skip was out of the question. But he was unquestionably walking tall, secure in being not-hated by his boyfriend, all through several blocks and past innumerable bums on countless increasingly saggy stoops, and endless chipped windowpanes and upended garbage cans, until—

“Here we are,” Steve said. 

They reached a tenement. It had a boarded-up storefront on the lowest level; and three columns of narrow windows; and some ugly, uneven fire escapes; and clotheslines strung across to the (equally depressing) building on the opposite side of the street. A rangy, underfed cat hissed at Tony from a behind a shabby lace curtain just as the street lamp flickered overhead. Steve led him up the stoop and Tony, at a loss for anything to say, offered, “Seems homey.”

Steve shot him an incredulous look, but pushed the door open and said, “I’m on the top floor, in the back.”

So Tony trudged up the cramped staircase, full of the sounds of Steve’s neighbors arguing (or getting along just fine. They seemed to speak a variety of different languages that Tony didn’t speak, and their voices bled into the symphony of the city-dweller—that is, the great concert that suggested that one’s fellow residents would not be letting one sleep tonight) and the unfamiliar-but-appetizing smells of their food, until he found the last apartment on the top floor. He moved aside to let Steve open the door and turn on the light. 

And saw wallpaper. Lots of wallpaper. Steve’s apartment was very wallpapered. And green. That is to say, the wallpaper was mostly green, and also partially pink, and also slightly white, and entirely floral, and altogether hideous. And there was a bathtub in the main room, which Tony thought might be the kitchen, only kitchens didn’t usually come with bathtubs. Steve also had a small table and some chairs, a sink and a stove, a shelf with some bowls and plates, and a small cabinet with a cylinder on top that Tony could only deduce was a fridge. So. Possibly a kitchen. But also a bathroom. 

“Are you hungry?” Steve asked, shrugging off his coat and folding it along the side of the tub. 

“No,” Tony said immediately, even though he was. He was starving. He would have accepted food from anyone at this point, provided that ‘anyone’ didn’t live in the slums, and that ‘anyone’ didn’t have an apartment wallpapered by an octogenarian sometime in the 1850s, and that ‘anyone’ didn’t have to bathe in their kitchen. Tony hadn’t had much exposure to the lives of the economically disadvantaged (beyond that stint with the terrorists, he supposed, but the nice thing about terrorist cave hideouts was that you didn’t have to worry about where the bathtub went, because there were no bathtubs at all), but he knew that a bathtub in the kitchen didn’t signal great wealth. Could Steve even afford to give his food away? 

“Are you sure?” Steve said, propping open the cabinet and pulling out a half-opened tin. “Oh, I’m out of ice. We’re going to have some bruises tomorrow. Sorry. But I have bread and beans, and—well, I guess you could put Crisco on the bread too, but at this hour—“

“I’m fine,” Tony said quickly. He shifted anxiously from foot to foot, surveying Steve’s apartment (the kitchen, plus one darkened room beyond, and a small alcove to the side that was half-hidden behind a sliding wooden door. Not exactly palatial), while Steve busied himself with whatever he’d pulled out of the fridge. 

“Do you want to sit down?” Steve asked, once he’d finished. 

Tony nodded, and took a seat. 

“Are you sure you aren’t hungry?” Steve asked. 

Tony shook his head vigorously. 

His stomach growled. 

Steve raised an eyebrow. 

“There’s plenty,” he said. 

“Really,” Tony said, “I’m fine. You just enjoy your, your—“

“Bean sandwich,” Steve helpfully supplied.

“Oh, yum,” Tony said. “But I’m fine.”

His stomach growled again. 

Steve raised an eyebrow and put his sandwich down. Then he began mashing the rest of the beans in the tin. 

“I ate one at the Mission,” Tony said. “They had bean sandwiches. You know, for the homeless. They’re all about handing out bean sandwiches to the homeless.“

“It’s Wednesday,” Steve said, getting up for more bread, “The Mission serves potatoes on Wednesdays. I should know. I’ve eaten there before.” 

He came back to the table with an extra plate, and hastily put together another bean sandwich. He held it out to Tony. 

Tony gave up, and took it. He bit into it gingerly. It wasn’t completely terrible. 

“If you want, you can stay up. Listen to the radio, if you want,” Steve said, “But I’m heading to bed. Headache.”

“Probably a concussion,” Tony said, between bites of his fast-disappearing bean sandwich. “I was meaning to talk to you about that. Do you think the hospital can do…I don’t know, some kind of brain scan?” 

Steve looked at him skeptically. 

Okay. Maybe they didn’t have those in 1941. 

“Or any kind of—any kind of x-ray,” Tony said, “Just a look at your head to see how it is. You took a lot of hits tonight.“

“So did you,” Steve said. He crossed over to the sink and dropped his plate inside. Then he reached up to the shelf, pulled down a toothbrush, and set about beginning his nighttime ablutions. “I don’t know. Seems extreme. If it is a concussion, I’ll be fine. It wouldn’t be the first time. And I go to the hospital enough without needing to bother them over something like that.”

“But—“

“I’m going to bed now,” Steve said. “Come if you want.” Then he finished rinsing his mouth, pulled aside the door next to the kitchen, and disappeared behind it. 

Tony attempted to process all this as he finished his bean sandwich. That business about not wanting to go to the hospital was depressing, and so was the bit about having had more than one concussion, and Tony felt like he should be focusing on that, but it had been a long day and Steve had just invited him to bed. _To bed_. And Tony knew he hadn’t meant _bed_ -bed, sure, because Steve thought he was a crazy old homeless person and one didn’t just up and decide to have sex with crazy old homeless people, but regular bed was a start, wasn’t it? And if Tony had been able to charm his way into bed with his (tough, Nazi-killing, obviously far more worldly) Steve, then this Steve would be—

Wait. He hadn’t yet confirmed that this Steve was even legal. And he didn’t even like Tony; he just didn’t hate him, and, anyway, Tony would be leaving 1941 soon, and he would feel like a better man if he left without seducing his potentially-underage boyfriend. God, what kind of creep was he? Forget all that. It was better to do the honorable thing.

“I, uh, think I’ll take the couch,” Tony called out.

“Haven’t got one,” Steve said, yawning. “Don’t mind if you share the bed, really. Bucky does, when he’s here.”

Well. 

Fuck the honorable thing, then. Tony dropped his plates in the sink, rinsed his mouth as best he could with some of Steve’s overpoweringly minty toothpaste, and pulled open the sliding panel, only to discover that this wasn’t just an alcove. It was also Steve’s bedroom, judging by the hard-back chair piled high with notebooks and pencils and an antique alarm clock and Steve’s threadbare clothes, and by the tiny twin bed. 

Steve was already asleep. He was snoring. Tony’s Steve didn’t do that. Tony took one skinny, outstretched arm and folded it over Steve’s torso, and then gently shifted him closer to the wall. Then he kicked off his shoes and stretched out next to Steve. It was a tight fit, and he could feel Steve’s irregular breathing through the thin mattress. It made this seem oddly intimate. 

As an afterthought, he checked Steve’s pulse. Slightly weak. Maybe a concussion. Or maybe this was just Steve. Frowning, Tony left it alone. He guided Steve’s wrist back to his chest, and Steve shifted next to him before cracking open one eye and saying clearly, “Bucky?” 

Tony supposed this was a good sign in terms of Steve’s cranial health, but it made him feel something that he was not going to examine very hard because it was almost certainly jealousy.

“No,” he said. “It’s Tony.”

“Oh,” Steve said, yawning. “Thanks, Tony.” With that, he rolled over and was asleep again, and, weirdly enough, this time the thanks made Tony feel better. Not about Brooklyn or 1941 – all of that still sucked – but about him and Steve. Maybe Steve only just-barely-didn’t-hate him, and maybe Steve didn’t believe him when Tony said he could be great someday, but Tony had still done this for him, had defended him and walked him home and checked on him, and it was sort-of wonderful to be able to do that for Steve. And to have Steve do that for him in turn.

Tony stared at him for a moment. It was still dark, but he could see the faint outline of Steve’s profile: his familiar nose and mouth and brow and that strange, narrow, contradictory chin. He ghosted one hand lightly over Steve’s mouth and contemplated—

But. No. He’d already decided he wasn’t going to be skeevy. This Steve really didn’t know him, and Tony couldn’t just run around kissing people who were all sleep-rumpled and unknowing, even if they were people who would someday be his boyfriend. Tony could be a scoundrel, but he wasn’t a total creep. 

Sighing, he found the blankets and pulled most of them over Steve, saving one for himself. Then he wadded that one into a pillow and stretched out on the floor next to the bed. 

There. That would be easier and more comfortable and less weird for everyone involved.

“Good night, Steve,” he said to the light snoring. Then he slept.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Waking up with Steve Rogers. Extreme awkwardness all around, especially because this chapter is fairly rough. Sorry for the wait!

Tony woke up because someone with very small feet stepped on his chin. He grabbed that person’s leg and pulled them down to the floor, purely on reflex, and then there was an “Oof” and a very sharp, knobbly elbow in his face. Tony discovered that he’d just smacked his poor, possibly-concussed future boyfriend into the floor.

“Oh god,” Tony said. “You could have a _concussion_ ; you’re not supposed to be smacked into floors after what you went through last night!”

“Or ever,” Steve offered, from where he was tangled up in the bed sheet Tony had been using as a pillow. “In an ideal world.”

Tony helped him up. In the morning light, Steve had some bruises already forming near his jaw, and his left eye was starting to swell up. He looked terrible. Judging from the various aches making themselves known all across Tony’s body, Tony couldn’t look much better.

“You said we were out of ice, right?” Tony said, “Crap. And you’re all purple-y today. You were hit a lot. You should really get your head checked—“

“Not the first time someone’s told me that,” Steve said, “Still think I’ll pass on it.”

Then they sort of looked at each other.

Steve said, “You can freshen up. Borrow my things if you want. They’re right there.” He gestured at the windowsill.

Tony shifted onto the bed to get at the narrow window, and discovered, now that he was significantly less tired, that it was a springy model of discomfort. Possibly he had done the ungentlemanly thing by making Steve sleep on it, and taking the entire cozy floor for himself. Or possibly he shouldn’t have let himself end up in his tiny not-boyfriend’s apartment in the first place. With some sleep and perspective, he could now see that his behavior yesterday was more than a little creepy, and yet he could’ve sworn that he’d had good reasons for doing everything he did.

Good, slightly obsessive, in-the-full-morning-daylight-beginning-to-seem-unbalanced reasons.

Steve wasn’t the only one who needed his head checked.

Steve cleared his throat. “We can ask my landlady for some ice if it means that much to you,” he said.

“It does,” Tony told him.

Not for him, obviously. He was Iron Man, he’d been kidnapped by terrorists once – he could take some bruising.

But Steve?

Okay, maybe Steve could take it too. That didn’t mean he should have to. And just because Tony was never this protective of his Steve didn’t mean he couldn’t feel slightly worried over this one.

This Steve was…well. He was kind of different. Not just the skinniness. Not just the asthma and the attitude. This Steve made Tony feel nervous and elated at the same time. Tony didn’t even feel this weird, off-balance crush sensation when he was with his Steve, so why was he feeling it now? Was it because this Steve was young enough to whisk him psychologically back to high school? That was kind of sick. That didn’t bode well for Tony’s mental health or his morals or—

“We can ask Mrs. Shevchenko for some ice, if it means that much to you,” Steve said. He looked worried. Maybe he was picking up on Tony’s inappropriate reaction.

“I’m weird in the mornings,” Tony said quickly. “Without my coffee, I mean. And I’m a strange person generally; you must have noticed.”

“Yes.”

“So there’s no need to look concerned—“

“I’m not.”

“You looked it,” Tony said.

“You went quiet for a minute,” Steve said, “That’s not like you. You’re obviously better now.”

“Oh, so much better,” Tony said, “I’m—I’m fantastic now. I’m peachy.”

“Great,” Steve said.

Then he just sort of looked at Tony, like he didn’t know what else to say.

Tony didn’t know what to say either. This was the worst, most awkward morning after ever. Probably because they hadn’t even had sex.

“I guess I should make the coffee then,” Steve said.

“God, yes,” Tony said.

Then he turned his attention back to the window. Tony shifted aside a basket full of neatly-folded briefs with metal snaps and starched, child-sized white undershirts, and found a bag of toiletries tucked against the window. It included a single antique razor and pack of disposable blades. Some more investigation produced an old shaving mirror. He was about to make off for the bathroom when he noticed the window was rattling.

Weird.

Tony cracked it open and looked down at the alley below. Nothing. The window frame rattled around him, and that’s when he noticed that someone had fixed two clothesline pulleys to the outer sill. One was creakily feeding line to a window on the building opposite, where a harried-looking woman was pinning up innumerable sets of damp granny underwear.

“You are not Steven,” the women said accusatorily, once she caught sight of Tony. “Or also the other one.”

“Binky,” Tony told her. “His name is definitely Binky.”

She raised an eyebrow at him.

After a moment, Tony hazarded, “Steve’s landlady?”

“Who is asking?” she said.

“A friend of Steve’s,” Tony said, “Who needs ice. He said you had ice.”

“We will see,” was all she said. Then she snapped her window closed, apparently fresh out of granny underwear for the moment.

Great.

Tony closed Steve’s window then and moved back out into the kitchen, and discovered that Steve’s apartment was no more impressive in the full light of day. The wallpaper was still blindingly floral, and there was still a tub next to the table; only now he could see that the darkened room beyond the kitchen was a tiny sitting room with two battered armchairs, an old radio, an easel, a stool, and a bookshelf brimming with art supplies and books.

There didn’t seem to be anywhere to freshen up. Didn’t Steve have, like, a bathroom? With a sink and a toilet? Obviously someone had gone and stuck the tub where it didn’t belong, but Tony couldn’t imagine living anywhere with no room to shave in and take aspirin in and squint at yourself awkwardly as you contemplated all those bad decisions you’d made the night before and why your eyes were red and your head felt like ass in.

A bathroom. Totally a thing that people had.

He located a door tucked between the tub and the table. That was probably it. Only then he opened it and Steve said, “What are you doing in my closet?” so he gave Steve’s collection of threadbare shirts and jackets a despairing glance and shut the door again.

“Sorry,” he said, “But tell me you have a bathroom.”

“Naturally,” Steve said, not looking up from the apparently endless task of preparing the coffee.

“Right, it isn’t an outhouse, is it? Because—“

“Of course it isn’t an outhouse,” Steve said, “I know this isn’t the fanciest walkup in Brooklyn, but there is a bathroom. It’s in the hallway.”

Tony glanced around Steve’s tiny apartment again.

“You don’t have a hallw—“

“The building hallway,” Steve said, sighing, and so Tony backed out of the apartment entirely and went down the hall testing doorknobs until one of them opened onto a horrible airless cell containing a toilet. There was no sink.

Where the hell did people shave in the forties? And why was everything so inconveniently located? Tubs in the kitchen, underwear at the window, and no sink. Tony returned to the apartment in some dejection. The harried-looking landlady was there, drinking coffee at the table. She’d brought over a bucket of ice, which Steve was using to make compresses of some kind.

“This is him!” she said. “Not you, but also not the other one.”

“Bucky,” Steve said.

“Binky,” Tony said at the same time.

Steve shot him a look, but gestured at the coffee anyway; apparently Tony’s peculiarities didn’t justify cutting him off from that much-needed morning manna. Tony gave up on freshening up and dove for it.

After a moment, Steve said, “Tony, Mrs. Schevchenko.” Tony totally got that. This was a sufficient introduction when you were only midway through your coffee.

“Why is he here?” Mrs. Shevchenko demanded, “Some kind of bum? And you take him home?”

“He helped me out last night,” Steve said.

“He looks crazy,” Mrs. Shevchenko said, “He has a bandage on his face.”

“Binky punched me,” Tony said.

“All your friends are crazy,” said Mrs. Shevchenko, “Why don’t you get married? You are almost twenty-three. Soon you will shrivel up and none of the girls will want you.”

“They don’t want me now,” Steve said, passing Tony a compress.

“Also, thank god,” Tony said, “You’re not, like, sixteen.”

Steve and Mrs. Shevchenko both looked at him. Tony put the compress to his cheekbone, which hurt like a bitch, and then looked down at his coffee.

“I’ve had a weird few days,” he said. It seemed like the most appropriate explanation. Then, after a few moments, he added, “And I can’t even find the sink.”

Steve and Mrs. Shevchenko both looked very pointedly at the kitchen sink.

Oh. Right.

“All of your friends are dummies,” continued Mrs. Shevchenko, “Dummies without steady jobs. And you are not like this. And soon the girls will like you when they realize it.”

Steve sighed.

“I have a job, actually,” Tony said.

“Really?” Steve said.

“Shocking but true,” Tony said.

“Proof,” said Mrs. Shevchenko, “Where is the proof?”

Tony fished around in his back pocket and pulled out the card Howard had given him. Steve and Mrs. Shevchenko squinted at it. “Stark Industries. I start today.”

“What?” said Mrs. Shevchenko, “Dressed like this?”

“I guess so…?”

Steve and Mrs. Shevchenko looked at him disbelievingly.

“All your friends are nogoodniks,” said Mrs. Shevchenko, with finality.

“Tony’s not—“ Steve said. “He’s a decent guy. But you probably shouldn’t go to work dressed like that, Tony.”

He was right. But it wasn’t like Tony had any other clothes, and, anyway, it wasn’t like Howard would care. He’d never had a problem with Tony’s outfits. Just with Tony being where he wasn’t wanted. Which was everywhere, as far as Howard had been concerned.

“Howard Stark’s off his nut, believe me. He knew I was a bum when he hired me, and he probably doesn’t care that I look like this. Just said to bring references of some kind, which…”

He trailed off. He didn’t have references. Crap.

Mrs. Shevchenko looked at him shrewdly. “You don’t have.”

“No,” Tony admitted, “I’m new in town. I don’t actually know anybody. Except maybe you, Steve, and Bucky and those two mission girls, but I don’t think any of them would write me one—“

“Sure I will. But it won’t be worth much,” Steve said, “And Sarah Brown would, maybe.”

“I will do it,” said Mrs. Shevchenko, “And I have clothes. You are maybe Mikhail’s size. Come.”

With that she rose and beckoned at Tony, who said, “Seriously?”

“Where is Brooklyn,” said Mrs. Shevchenko placidly, “If we do not help each other?”

Tony didn’t even want to think about that. Brooklyn was bad enough as it was.

But Steve was nodding as though Mrs. Shevchenko had imparted a great philosophical truth, and also glancing longingly at his tub, like he very much wanted to take a bath but couldn’t with Tony and Mrs. Shevchenko taking up all the space in his kitchen-bathroom. And Tony did need references, and probably clothes that didn’t make him look like a half-naked crazy person, so he pulled on his shoes and went with Mrs. Shevchenko.

Her apartment was, if possible, even more cluttered and floral than Steve’s was. It was also bigger and seemed to have more rooms, although she too had the unfortunate tub-near-the-door situation, which she took full advantage of by turning on the taps as soon as they walked in.

“You smell,” she said, and then, almost as an afterthought, “You have a name?”

“Tony Carbonell,” Tony said.

“Good,” she said, “I will include this in the reference. You take a bath.” Then she pushed him toward the tub and left him to it.

She had a cake of oddly-grey soap that smelled medicinal, but using it was better than going unwashed. She also had the same overpoweringly minty toothpaste that Steve used, tucked between endless bottles of chemically scented shampoo. Tony had spirited off Steve’s shaving supplies, so, after washing and brushing his teeth (surreptitiously, with one eye on the door, because the last thing he needed was for Steve’s landlady to walk in and demand to know what the hell was that thing in his chest), he balanced the mirror on the edge of the tub and disposed of the bandage on his jaw to better survey himself with.

He really did look like a bum. The swelling and bruising were nowhere near as bad as he’d assumed, but he desperately needed to shave. Unfortunately, a few tries of Steve’s shaving kit revealed that early twentieth-century disposables were in no way designed to achieve the kind of follicular perfection Tony’s face usually aspired to.

Unsurprising. Also more depressing than it had any right to be. Also kind of painful, because he nicked himself near his left ear and spent a full minute cursing about it, during which he probably woke up all of Mrs. Shevchenko’s immediate neighbors. Eventually, after some time spent dabbing ineffectually at the cut with water, he realized he would have to go clean-shaven. Which made him look _old_. And, alright, also a whole lot less like Howard, which could only be to his benefit, but Howard Stark was young and dapper at this very moment, even with that fucking mustache, and Tony couldn’t help but think that this was horribly unfair.

He finished his ablutions in something of a black mood, and found a dingy pink towel and some truly hideous clothes waiting for him on a stool near the fridge. Evidently Mikhail favored cheap checked shirts and high-waisted pants held up with Urkel suspenders.

Great. It was going to be just wonderful showing up in the future dressed like this. Pepper would probably die of laughter, and then put in an express and timely application at the pearly gates just so that she could be reincarnated quickly enough to come down to earth and laugh at him all over again.

“Now you look less crazy,” said Mrs. Shevchenko, coming in with evidently no inclination to knock first. “Good. Steven and I do not know you, so everything is made up.”

Tony took the paper she offered him.

“I’m half Italian?” he said.

“I wanted Greek,” she said.

“And I used to go door-to-door selling eyeglasses?”

“I wanted a bullfighter,” said Mrs. Shevchenko.

“And I’m from Staten Island?”

“I said Havana,” said Mrs. Shevchenko, “Steven did not know if you spoke Spanish.”

Even with Steve’s adjustments, it read less like a reference and more like an overwrought romance novel. It described in detail the many disappointments that Tony had faced over the past two decades; his fruitless search for work, thwarted at every turn by circumstances beyond his control; and also a rather tragic series of catastrophes that had befallen his natural parents and six older siblings.

“I was sent out to Nebraska on an orphan train and made to work the land by a cruel pair of Swedes?”

“That I put,” said Mrs. Shevchenko. “Steven said it was probably not so bad. I also put the number of Mikhail’s store. When they call, I will say to tell them all this is true.”

“Good,” Tony said, “Because I can see why they’ll need the corroboration.”

“Now one thing,” said Mrs. Shevchenko. “Because where is Brooklyn if we do not help each other? I need for you to do something.”

Ah. Tony had been expecting this. Only usually it was money people wanted, and he didn’t have any at the moment; or they had very specific demands involving highly-advanced technology, only he couldn’t really expect that from someone who used a pulley system to air out her underwear; or also sometimes people wanted to know other people who Tony knew, only he really didn’t know anybody right now except for Steve, and only in a weird prescient way that he couldn’t talk about; or sometimes people wanted—

Oh. Ew. Not that she was an ugly woman or anything, but. Just. No.

“You’re married,” Tony said quickly, “I mean, obviously you’re a Mrs., and I assume Mikhail is your husband or at least the kid you had with your husband, or possibly your strapping brother out to defend your virtue, and—“

Mrs. Shevchenko made a disgusted face. “Please. I am sick to my bones now. I mean for you to do something for Steven.”

Oh. Okay. That was better.

Tony was behind that one-hundred-percent, actually.

“Sure,” he said, “Anything. I, uh, really like him. He’s a good person.”

“He is alone,” said Mrs. Shevchenko. “With a dead mother and always people telling him he is too small and he is sick every year and his friend is—the name is so silly that I forget: Bowky?”

“Yes,” Tony said, “Absolutely.”

“Yes, this other one is now working, which is a blessing to his mother I am sure because he cannot always be taking girls to Coney Island and looking up their skirts, but for Steven it is hard. And it is hard that this man from the army was so firm with him and told him he would not ever be wanted, because I think in the army even a very small boy like Steven could be useful because he is very fierce. And it is better than him being here and sadly fighting with the boys that are bigger than him all the time.” She sighed. “And so probably he needs to be married.”

Tony blinked at her.

“I don’t…” he said, “I don’t quite see the connection. Between the army stuff and the other stuff and…marriage? I don’t really see how—“

“Because you are a dummy,” said Mrs. Shevchenko, “And also I can tell a man who likes to look up skirts. But this a man who the girls today love to be with, so I think you can probably help Steven meet someone who sees he is good and does not mind he is small.”

“Right,” Tony said, “I mean, not about the skirts. Not that you’re wrong about the skirts. You’re sort of obsessed with the skirts, aren’t you? That seems unhealthy, first of all. Second of all, judgmental—“

“You do not want to be helping,” said Mrs. Schevchenko flatly.

“No! I mean, yes, but—“

Did he?

He didn’t, really. Sure, finding someone who could see the good in Steve would be great. But Steve didn’t need that, did he? There was someone right here who could see the good in him. Tony. Not that they could be married in the here and now, or that they’d ever considered marriage, since Tony was not a marrying guy and he’d always figured Steve was old-fashioned and had gender hangups, although considering what Steve was willing to _do_ with him maybe that was an unfair assumption, but—

“You are wanting all the girls for yourself,” Mrs. Schevchenko decided.

“What? No!” Tony said, “Look, I’m perfectly willing to share the girls. Assuming they consent to that. But what’s wrong with Steve is…”

What _was_ wrong with Steve?

That was just it. There was something wrong. It wasn’t just that he wasn’t Captain America yet, or that he was small, or that he lived in a miserable tenement in a miserable city with, like, maybe one friend—

“Nothing is wrong. Only that his life is hopeless and there is no happiness for him because he is so sad and small and lonely,” said Mrs. Schevchenko.

Wow. Harsh.

Also, wrong.

“That’s not it,” Tony said slowly, “He doesn’t have to be like that. There’s nothing about him that’s inherently sad, or…or destined to be lonely and miserable. I mean, sure: he’s small. He’s also got more guts and decency than anyone I know.”

Mrs. Schevchenko sighed.

“He is the best of the boys. He never looks up skirts.”

“Right,” Tony said, “Exactly. Not really the metric I would use, but the point is that he’s a good person. The problem is that I’m not sure _he_ can see it. But he doesn’t need a wife to show it to him. He’s got—“

Me.

“Friends,” Tony settled for saying.

“They are not enough,” Mrs. Schevchenko said decisively, “They will not keep him from throwing himself at the army.”

Probably nobody could do that. And, given the impact Steve would have on world events, that was probably a good thing, too.

“He needs a wife,” said the one-track-minded Mrs. Schevchenko, “It is the only thing. Someone who can care for Steve and value him. You will find this girl. You are good with girls.”

But Steve didn’t need a girl. Steve had Tony. Or would have him, give or take seventy-something years.

“Why would I do that?” Tony said.

Quick as a flash (far, far more quickly than anyone could expect from the looks of her), Mrs. Schevchenko took the reference paper from Tony’s hand and walked to the stove. She lit one of the burners. Then she dangled the reference over it.

“So I don’t burn your reference paper,” she said, very pleasantly for someone who was threatening to burn up Tony’s ticket to the future, “See. We will negotiate.”

This was not a negotiation. Tony was a businessman. He knew negotiations. It wasn’t all bullying by burning up fake papers. In fact, that usually wasn’t a part of it at all. Usually there was finesse to it. You had to let the other side have your way.

“This isn’t negotiation,” Tony said.

Mrs. Schevchenko turned up the heat. Literally.

“This is Brooklyn negotiation,” she said.

Wow, she was a natural.

“Say I find this—person,” Tony said, “Someone who values Steve the way he is, and cares about him, and keeps him from making bad decisions—“ _Bad decisions like giving up on the army_ , his mind supplied, “Is that good enough for you?”

“This is what I am saying,” said Mrs. Schevchenko, “Now you see.”

Good. Tony could do that.

“Alright,” Tony said, “I promise.”

Mrs. Schevchenko wanted it signed in triplicate (“Writing is worth so much in this country!”), and she made Tony agree surrender himself to Mikhail if he failed to deliver within the year. She also weaseled Howard’s exact address out of him (“for _tracking_ ”) and threatened to report him to local gangs if he so much as waivered from his holy quest of finding Steve a nice girl.

She was turning out to be so good at this Brooklyn negotiation that, if she’d been a resident of the twenty-first century, Tony would have hired her on the spot.

But eventually she had to let him go.

Steve was waiting for him on the stoop, all oversized coat and the narrow shoulders and straight, stubborn back.

“She must like you,” he told Tony.

“She likes to extort me, anyway,” Tony said.

Steve gave him a puzzled look.

“Never mind,” Tony said, “I—“

He looked at this Steve. Really looked at him. The thing was: this wasn’t his Steve. He had all the things that mattered, of course, but he was—well. Complex. Kind of funny. Very prickly. And Tony didn’t know if all of that was a problem to fixed, if this Steve just needed a couple doses of super serum and an army job and – and Tony – and then, bam, instant happiness.

But it was kind of fucked up to think that this Steve was somehow incomplete, wasn’t it? That he needed to be married or fixed or even just souped-up into Avengers material.

But he wasn’t happy; that was certain. Tony’s Steve was. Tony’s Steve had someone who valued and cared for him. Or at least he would, once Tony got his hands on that generator today.

“I made her a promise,” Tony said, “And you know what? I’m gonna keep it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My new years resolution was to update this. AND I DID IT.
> 
> Steve's landlady is kind of my grandma, idk. And sorry about the lack of Howard. More Howard next time. I promise. I try to keep my promises, just like Tony. Only of course sometimes things take a wrong turn and then it takes a while. 
> 
> Hint hint, Tony. Hint hint.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony has thoughts, Steve gets a chance to be the weirdo, and the return of dapper Howard! 
> 
> Or not so dapper. Tony comes by his worst traits honestly.

Steve offered to help Tony find his new job. Tony wasn’t surprised by this. Steve in any incarnation was a helper. Even if the people he sometimes helped out were weirdoes who accosted him in public places, seemed way too invested in him, made loud declarations of heroism, and/or looked like bums.

Steve’s neighborhood was, predictably, brighter in the mornings. Tony decided that he preferred Brooklyn’s dark, dangerous night, when it had been just him and Steve.

Because sure, sometimes his Steve clung stubbornly to some outdated idea, or got the wrong notion into his head because he’d missed out on seventy years of explanatory history – sometimes the 1940s got in the way, for Tony’s Steve. But never quite like this. This was so loud, with people rolling up storefronts and piling fruit on pushcarts and shouting after cars. Also smelly, with windows full of fish and shoe polish and odd baked lumps with origins in far-off locales. And it was sort of hard to strike up a conversation with Steve when he was dodging past fruit carts and trolleys and newssellers and Brooklynites of all stripes who didn’t care if they knocked into anyone on their way to work.

Steve paused in his dodging long enough to buy them some lumps on their way to the subway. Tony took an experimental bite. Pretty good.

He still felt kind of bad about taking food from Steve. It wasn’t just that Steve was obviously poor; it was also that Steve drank his morning coffee in his undershirt, so Tony knew for a fact that there were triangular hollows where his clavicles met his shoulder blades. Tony knew supermodels who subsisted entirely on bottled water and cocaine; maybe also on the occasional gin-and-tonic if they were the nice kind of supermodels, the kind that took pity on Tony drinking alone; and all of those girls would look downright enormous standing next to Steve.  

“I’m not actually that hungry,” Tony said, and passed most of the mysterious baked lumps back to Steve.

“It’s just my size,” Steve said matter-of-factly.

Tony stared at him.

“It’s not that I don’t eat enough, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Steve said, “It’s just my size.”

Then he passed the lumps back to Tony.

Tony reasoned that people probably worried over this Steve a lot. It had to get old. This Steve probably hated being constantly reminded of how delicate he was.

Tony conceded the lumps thing. Tony was understanding. He was an awesome future boyfriend like that.

And, being an awesome future boyfriend, although he felt bad having Steve pay for his subway token, he conceded that too. First off, he didn’t have any money left, shocking as that was to consider. Secondly, reminding Steve that he was poor _and_ skinny would probably just add insult to injury.

This Steve took insult pretty quickly. Tony’s Steve had either mellowed – a lot – or else he was letting Tony get away with a lot.

The latter thought wasn’t exactly comforting. In fact, it was the kind of shitty thought that popped frequently in Tony’s life and that, if Tony’d had money on him, he could have brushed off with high-risk experimentation or by testing jetpacks or through liquor and attractive people (not that he did that much these days, but still) or by building robots or by blowing stuff up in the name of science or – well, in a million ways, really. Which really showed you how much being poor sucked. Because he couldn’t brush it off when all he had were borrowed clothes and a subway token and made-up references in his pocket and a tiny boyfriend who didn’t know they were dating.

But things were going well with his Steve, so why worry, right? He would pop back to the future today and nothing had to be different. This was all an accident, an aberration, Tony Stark-Raving-Mad (Thank you, New York Post, given the usual quality of the headlines, that one had to take some effort) fucking up and somehow turning the timestream on its head. But he’d fix it again. He always did. And then he’d be back with his Steve, who liked him and definitely wasn’t letting him get away with things, right?

Right.

Except maybe he was. And there wasn’t anything nearby to keep Tony from focusing on that, not on the subway platform (unless you counted this Steve, who seemed perfectly fine to wait in silence) and not even on the actual train (where this Steve seemed almost relieved that they weren’t repeating last night’s debacle).

The thing was, it was _weird_ how much less defensive his Steve had become. Wasn’t it? This spark in Steve… it hadbeen there all along, right? He’d hated Tony at first, and had taken insult pretty quickly, and it had been fun, even: the banter and the sexual tension and all that back-and-forth that highlighted the gap between Cap’s outdated sensibilities and Tony’s modern bluster. But then, unexpectedly, things had seemed to slot into place. Kind of. It went from _I can’t stand you_ to _we’re solid teammates_ to _I get you, somehow_.

I get you, Tony Stark. I get your moods and your issues and your brilliance and I _like_ you, too.

Somewhere along the way this Steve, who if Tony had to admit could be slightly preachy and hard to befriend despite his heroism and his fierce, tiny-person moxie, had decided that he liked Tony. He’d figured that putting up with Tony’s shit was worth it. For what? For Tony? That didn’t even make sense.

But then Steve didn’t make a whole lot of sense. They’d established that already.

And what had Tony done for him?

Okay, so Tony loved him, right, but what did that count for, really? Totally shitty people could love you; Tony had it on good account that Howard had loved him, in his own way, and. Well. Case in point.

And what was Tony’s love worth if he hadn’t even known that Steve worked to be the guy he was, understanding and surprisingly trusting? And willing to bend, if only for Tony.

Because Steve _had_ to work at it. All this time, Steve must’ve been putting a lot of work into the relationship, actually, because at his foundation he was apparently pretty prickly and untrusting. Only Tony hadn’t picked up on that before meeting this Steve. Or his Steve hadn’t let him know. And why would he have? Tony had never asked about his life before the serum.

Tony had to remedy that.

“Tell me about yourself. What do you do?” Tony said, “Like, for work?”

“Clean counters. Wash dishes.”

Wow. Skinny, poor, and trapped in a meaningless restaurant staff existence. No wonder the guy was prickly.

“But you draw, right?”

“Yeah.”

Mentioning art seemed to make Steve brighten a bit. Good, good. Almost like his Steve. Maybe it was easy to effect a conversion from prickly Steve to normal Steve. Maybe it wasn’t even that he was working at letting Tony get away with shit; maybe he just had a tendency to become more easygoing when you were on the topic of things he liked. And he liked Tony.

Only of course this Steve didn’t, so who knew why his modern counterpart was so different. Though, admittedly, modern Tony wasn’t a crazy, homeless stalker.

But there he went focusing on himself again. When the whole point was to focus on Steve – to be an awesome future boyfriend.

Tony was kind of bad at this, actually.

“You don’t draw for work?”

“No.”

“Why—“

“No one’s hired me yet. It’s a hobby for now. And I go to night school.”

School! School meant prospects. It meant a future. Weirdly enough, though Tony knew perfectly well Steve had a hell of a future ahead of him, there was something nice in discovering that this Steve also had academic hopes, like maybe he wasn’t just sitting around waiting to get into the army and in so doing driving his landlady and Bucky Barnes to despair.

Not that Tony would have judged him if he had, exactly. Only that was a pretty bleak picture. Good to know Steve’s life wasn’t totally stagnant and stupid and stuck in the 1940s. Steve had expectations. He dreamed of the future enough to go to school.

Good. Good. Very good. He was learning so much already. None of it indicated that this Steve was so completely divorced from modernity that he’d latched onto Tony and put up with him only because, like, all his friends were dead and he had no other options. None of it indicated that Tony’s Steve was wasting his time on some asshole who never bothered to ask after him or put equal work into the relationship.

Tony was putting a ton of work into the relationship. He was _brimming_ with questions. Not even crazy-person questions. Totally normal, hey-I-just-met-you-sorry-for-stalking-you-thanks-for-the-subway-token questions.

“Where do you go to—“

“Pratt.”

“What do you draw there? Like—”

“Live models, mostly.”

“Do you like—”

“I _don’t_ like talking loudly on the train,” Steve said.

Oh.

The train was only marginally crowded this morning. People didn’t seem to be listening in. Two pretty black girls in dainty hats were giggling, sure, but that was probably an inside joke. And an older guy with a briefcase was way too enthralled by the _Daily Eagle_ to care about what Tony and Steve were saying.

Maybe last night had scarred Steve so badly that he was determined to never talk on the train again? Because, honestly, no one looked interested in eavesdropping.

Only then a young straphanger ventured to ask if the live models wore many clothes (which, to be fair, had been Tony’s first follow-up question when it came to the live models. He’d shelved it in favor of fact-finding more directly applicable to Steve.)

Steve didn’t answer about the live models. He just brought a hand to his temples like he had a particularly bad headache.

“Wow, you can’t take me on these things, can you?” Tony said, “In my defense, the subway seems to be Brooklyn’s free show—“

The man with the paper said, “Yeah, if you put on the free show,” eliciting some laughter from the pretty girls and a look from Steve that suggested he’d ripped the words right from his mouth. 

“—Because I guess you don’t have theaters, or Broadway, or—“

“We have theaters! Brooklyn has theaters.”

Steve was starting to look annoyed again.

“I just want to know about you,” Tony said, after a minute.

“I think you know more about me than I do about you,” Steve said easily.

Alright. That was fair.

Tony pondered what to tell him. It wasn’t like he could tell him much. Hell, it wasn’t like it mattered, because he wouldn’t see this Steve after today. But after all this some quid pro quo seemed important. He couldn’t let this Steve or his Steve down, right? He couldn’t be the asshole who didn’t bend as much as he should, who just let his partner do all the work. Even if he’d actually _had_ been that asshole until he took a weird detour into the past to learn this Very Important Moral Lesson.

Trying to figure out what to say next took up the remainder of the train ride. What could he tell Steve that didn’t implicate time travel and superheroism and adventures far in the future, far beyond his tiny 1940s ken?

Nothing, much.

Steve pulled him along when their stop came up (or at least Tony assumed it was their stop; he didn’t know Brooklyn and he wasn’t going to make note of it when he was going to be in the future in a few hours and it wouldn’t matter anyway), back up into the morning daylight, and then he said, “I didn’t mean that you had to stop talking altogether, Tony.”

“I’m not from here,” Tony said quickly.

“I got that,” Steve said.

Silence. After a minute, Steve added, “So where are you from?”

Um. The future. But obviously not.

Maybe Manhattan. No, too close. California. Wait – how did that explain how he’d ended up in Brooklyn? Because that was sure to be the next question. Crap. No, not crap. He could do this. He was from California and he’d come to do some work for Howard Stark on generators and soon he would be transferred away again, because generators were, um, a tricky business. And that was why Steve probably wouldn’t ever see him again after today. Right. Yes.

Tony said all this at once.

Steve nodded, like it all made sense and didn’t sound completely made up, which was a relief.

Too bad it was a pack of lies. So much for quid pro quo.

Just to say something true, Tony added, “I’m actually a genius. That’s why I can work with generators.”

Steve looked at him skeptically.

Oh sure. He chose to doubt _that_.

“I guess that’ll get you in with Howard Stark,” Steve said after a minute. He fished Howard’s card out of his oversized overcoat. Apparently that’s where the card had gone. Tony wasn’t really good at keeping track of nine-to-five-type-job-related things. It seemed like a lot of hassle, to be honest.

“It’s this way,” Steve added, “Just past Brooklyn Hospital.”

That sounded familiar. Familiar and worrisome. Not just because it had ‘Brooklyn,’ in the title, and because everything here was Brooklyn all the time and it was always worrying to Tony, but because—

“That’s where you were,” Tony said, “When you missed out on your chance for the army, I mean. You were at Brooklyn Hospital.”

Steve’s mouth went tight.

Right. He probably didn’t want to be reminded of that. There Tony went souring the conversation again.

There had to be a way to make it better. Tony looked up at the boxy brick hospital, a thoroughly imposing and somehow antiseptic contrast to the modest brick shops and shabby Italianate brownstones, the soaring public school building on the corner, and the wide green park just beyond the hospital gates –

Actually, this part of Brooklyn was kind of nice.

“Forget it,” Tony said, “Hey, something else you can know about me: I like this neighborhood. Which is pretty surprising, let me tell you.  But look at this park. What a park. Kind of a hill, but also a park, like no one could decide what they wanted, but then they figured they might as well go with both; you know, like a miracle of design, or at least like people senselessly overreaching, which is actually my kind of thing—”

“I think this is my favorite park in Brooklyn,” Steve said thoughtfully.

Success! He was learning more and more about Steve every minute. He was even learning that not everything in Steve’s life was totally depressing. Steve had a favorite park.

Cute.

“Why?” Tony said, “If you don’t mind my asking.”

They took a detour into the park. It really was more like a hill. Slopey. At its crest there was an enormous marble column.

“We used to come here when I was a kid,” Steve said, “It was fun. I wasn’t much of a runner, but we could sled or slide down the hill and you didn’t have to be big to do that. And I used to sketch the monument.”

Through the trees, Tony could make out a kind of urn on top of the column. Nice. Classical. Not very ornate, but he guessed skinny artistic kids had to start somewhere. The closer they got, the better for Tony to make out the stars carved into the marble and some enormous metal eagles at the base.

So maybe it wasn’t the most imaginative monument, but it still fit Steve to a tee.

“I can see why you’d like it. Very monumental,” Tony said.

“McKim, Meade, and White,” Steve said, as though imparting terribly important information.

Tony’s brain dredged up several inconsequential facts related to the names, not the least of which were that these were very historical architects that had designed nice, classical, old-fashioned, wholly American, boring things, roughly ten million years ago when the earth was green and his father’s father a mere infant.

“Oh, wow,” he said, “You don’t say.”

“Really!” Steve said.

Just to keep Steve on a topic he enjoyed, because when Steve had fun _he_ had fun, and also because he was good for Steve – he was a good listener and he paid attention to what Steve liked and he could put up with talking about boring old architects if that was what Steve wanted, and if that didn’t indicate complete compatibility and understanding then what did? – Tony added, “Let me tell you, this place is a credit to Brooklyn.”

“This is one of the most important places here,” Steve said, panting slightly at the exertion of crossing the hill, but otherwise very much focused on and devoted to his chosen park.

“Really?”

“Well, it was a fort,” Steve said, “Back during the Revolutionary War.”

“So you might call it an American treasure,” Tony put in.

“Exactly.”

“So full of history,” Tony said, “Valor, defending our rights, sticking it to old bullying Britain—”

“It’s a testament to our earliest soldiers,” Steve said.

“A chronicle of freedom,” Tony said, because nothing brought out the passion in his boyfriend like the old red, white, and blue, and no one was more committed to rousing Steve’s passion than he, Tony Stark, “A monument to liberty, a memorial for—”

“The prison ship martyrs buried beneath our feet,” Steve said, nodding.

“What?” said Tony.

“I don’t think all seventeen thousand,” Steve added thoughtfully, “Most of the bodies ended up in the East River, I think. But some of them.”

Oh god. It wasn’t a hill.

It was a burial mound.

“I’m sorry,” Tony said, “You spent your childhood sledding down a _mass grave_?”

Well, no wonder Tony’s Steve never told him much about his life before the twenty-first century. And no wonder this Steve was so weird.

“It’s more of a crypt,” Steve informed him, “For the original American patriots.”

This was completely what any Steve would say in any time period, and yet it left Tony speechless.

“You’ve left me speechless,” Tony told him, “You and your monument have actually robbed me of words.”

Steve squinted up at him. He said, “I’ve barely known you twenty-four hours, but something tells me that’s unlikely.”

Fair enough.

“So I guess you’re off to build generators?” Steve said, after a moment.

“What?” Tony said.

He was still processing the mass grave in the middle of Brooklyn.

“Your job,” Steve said, gesturing at a genteel five-story brownstone directly facing the burial mound, “204 Washington Park. It’s right there.”

Right. His job. That he planned to keep for only as long as it took to get back to the future. Which would hopefully be, like, forty minutes, depending on what Howard had at hand.

“I’m gonna be transferred really soon,” Tony said, “Genius work is like that. Here today, gone tomorrow—“

Gone _to_ tomorrow, actually.

“Sure,” said Steve.

“Off to do generator work with other generator geniuses. You know how it is—“

“Have to take it where you can get it,” Steve said diplomatically.

“Right! But here’s the thing,” Tony grabbed him by the shoulders. Steve seemed only marginally taken aback; he had a soldier’s instincts already, apparently, and could easily adapt to bizarre situations. The bizarre situation of course being Tony.

But, oh God, what could Tony say now? This was it. This was the last he’d see of this Steve. And, yes, there was a rush of elation when he thought of going back to his Steve. But he was also kind of…disappointed?

Part of it was because he and this Steve had little-to-no connection yet. Sure, they had spark. But it was spark like a black-and-white movie, spark born of misunderstanding, spark that highlighted comic differences in their outlook on life. It was the spark two minutes before Cary Grant or Charlie Chaplin or Fatty Arbuckle (he was mixing up his genres and actors and film time periods, possibly, but who cared) got slapped in the face by some brassy beauty who’d had enough of his comedic and mostly-ineffective attempts at flirtation.

It was the spark before Steve bent enough to understand him, to like him. He couldn’t tell if Steve liked him, honestly. He couldn’t read Steve at all.

And what the hell did it say about him that he was still so concerned with that?

Here’s what he’d learned about this Steve: at roughly ninety-eight pounds wet, he still wanted to face down Nazis and thugs. Despite having no money and a shitty apartment, he’d buy you your subway token. He didn’t think there was any excuse for excluding people. No one knew where he was from, exactly, but they knew he wouldn’t back down from a fight. He inspired common-sense protectiveness in his landlady, who seemed to prefer melodrama over common sense any day. He inspired extreme frustration in Bucky Barnes, a looker who probably had an otherwise charmed life.

He’d been personally turned down by Uncle Sam. His favorite park was a cemetery.

He went to school. He thought you should be nice to your neighbors. He thought you shouldn’t air your personal business on the subway.

He was confident enough to tell you where to shove it. But if you told him that he was destined for heroism then he wouldn’t believe you.

“You’re great,” Tony told him, “You know that, right?”

“Uh,” Steve said.

“Also confusing,” Tony added, “I can’t figure you out. I—“

“Right. Yes. I’m the confusing one,” said Steve.

“Think you don’t like me, but—“

“I don’t _get_ you,” Steve said.

“That’s not important,” Tony said, “God, I’ve been thinking that was important this whole time—“

“You were?”

“But it’s not,” Tony decided, “What’s important is—is—and I know you hate this, but bear with me, okay? – is telling you that you are amazing. You really are. You have a huge future ahead of you. Huge. Far-reaching. Don’t give up on the army. Keep doing what you’re doing, you know, facing down bullies and stuff like that; you probably won’t die, so—”

In fact, he’d probably just catch the attention of that doctor who’d created the super serum, Erskine or whatever, so that was fine and Tony couldn’t tell him not to do it, and anyway Tony figured he _had_ to do it, because that’s who Steve was. And he was determined to understand and support Steve.

“I probably won’t…?” Steve said, “What? No one’s ever—“

“In fact, you definitely won’t,” Tony said, “And you’ve got the right idea. Because you are a stand-up person, Steve, you are a fighter and you like to defend people, and you don’t let anybody pick on you, and you’re a _good_ person, and you shouldn’t let anybody pick on you—”

“I’m not planning to,” Steve said. Then he took Tony’s hands and brought them down from his shoulders. “Tony, what’s this about?”

“I’m not going to see you again for a very, very long time,” Tony said, “And I wanted to make sure you knew the important stuff.”

Steve stared at him.

“The important stuff is that…you like me? Not where you’re going, or why, or—”

“I think all the stuff about me is less important,” Tony admitted, “I worry about it all the time; I’ve been worrying about it all morning. And you don’t get this, but it’s selfish. Trust me. I’ve been selfish about you. I’m kind of a selfish person, actually. When you meet selfish people in the future, you actually shouldn’t bend to their whims. I’m just saying. It’s funny, because I never thought of you as bending before, but now I’m kind of concerned that maybe you have bad taste in people and you’re going to end up in situations where maybe you don’t get out what you put in, and—”

Steve covered his face in both his hands. He made a weird, choky kind of sound. Given the state of this Steve’s health, Tony figured it could be some kind of sudden asthmatic attack. Tony immediately stopped talking and put a steadying hand on Steve’s arm. What if he’d misjudged this Steve’s capacity for tolerating bizarre situations and provoked some kind of sudden breakdown by all his weird behavior?

Thank god they were right by that ugly hospital.

But then Steve put his hands down and he was laughing. Tony opened his mouth to comment on that, because it was kind of unexpected.

Steve said, “Shut up.”

“What?”

“You’re not selfish,” Steve said. He started walking out of the park. Tony followed. Then Steve said, “I like you too, Tony.”

He did?

“You do?” Tony said.

“Sure. Didn’t we go over this last night?”

“No,” Tony said mulishly, as they crossed the street to 204 Washington Park, “We didn’t. You said you didn’t hate me, which isn’t the same thing, and anyway you shouldn’t be saying it at all. I’m just, you know, I guess I’m needy. I don’t want to admit to it, but it doesn’t seem fair not to say it, and this is exactly what I’m talking about. You suddenly deciding not to be prickly with me, even though that’s who you are—”

“Gosh, thanks,” Steve said.

“—because you are just – you—and you’ll help me out and you’ll try to like me even if I don’t deserve it, because I don’t pay enough attention to who you really are underneath, and what your life has really been like, and what you really value—”

“You pay me plenty of attention,” Steve said, raising his eyebrows, “It’s a little weird, actually.”

“No!” Tony said. Because he wasn’t getting it. “Well, yes. It is weird. But you, Steve, are pride and—and struggle. And stubbornness, and liberty and drive and all that good stuff. And me? I’m flash and cash and bullshit. You think I’m just a guy like you, somebody who’s helped out every little guy he’s ever met, somebody who tries to understand other people, and who puts in the effort to make things easier for them, and I’m not. I mess up. You don’t really know me.”

 _If you did_ , Tony thought, _I think you – the you in the future, that is – would hold me at arms length. But he doesn’t. And I don’t get it._

Steve gave him a look like he thought Tony was the stupidest person in the world. Then he patted Tony on the arm.

“We can get to know each other outside working hours, if you want,” he said.

“No! You won’t see me again for a really long time,” Tony told him, “I’m leaving Brooklyn. I’m—“

“And you know where to find me when you’re back in Brooklyn,” Steve said. He started to walk away.

“You don’t get it,” Tony called out, “And you completely messed up what I was trying to tell you, because you’re not really listening. That’s the problem with being prickly and stubborn. You don’t really listen. This is really important. It’s about your future!”

“Go to work, Tony!” Steve said, without turning around. He crossed to the park, ducked behind a tree, and vanished.

So. Tony had completely messed that up. Par for the course with him, really.

But just because it was normal didn’t mean he had to feel good about it. He felt oddly hollow, actually, because that was the last time he’d see that completely unmasked, complicated, maybe sort of surly, still-just-as- _kind_ Steve. Sure, maybe he thought Tony was weird and maybe he took everything Tony said the wrong way – compliments as insults and warnings as jokes – but he was still the person Tony loved, and Tony hadn’t even been able to pull off a goodbye properly.

And how was he going to explain all this to his Steve?

Because what if his Steve remembered it?

Hell, what if he’d just fucked up their relationship somehow? What if his Steve suddenly developed memories of a weird hobo that had looked just like his boyfriend? And who’d ditched him for seventy-something years after a truly bizarre night together? This was the problem with being Tony Stark, really. He was just one of life’s eternal fuckups. He did things like sell weapons and not notice they were being used to kill innocent people. Or he’d try to explain to Steve that he wasn’t the best future boyfriend only to make Steve like him just as they had to part ways. Or he’d fix his suit and accidentally transport himself into the past. This had been going on for ages with Tony, though, long before the suit was ever in the picture, and there were always consequence. First you fucked up and got kicked out of school and had to hear your father’s droning voice; then you fucked up and it was terrorists; who’d be surprised, really, if this colossal fuckup came with a price too? And if the price was losing Steve? Because—

“The stupidest, most monkey’s uncle behavior—“ came a very familiar voice from inside 204 Washington Park.

Oh, god. Tony knew that droning voice. Tony knew that dumb, old-fashioned phrasing, even. Maybe the fallout wasn’t losing Steve. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t going to be a nightmare. It was going to be like a lot of Tony’s earliest nightmares, actually.

“I don’t think I have to explain to you the kind of arrogance, Esme!” said Howard’s voice again, “The complete disregard for responsibility, and for—“

Howard’s voice was followed by Howard, throwing open the doors to his brownstone and starting down the stoop.

“—the opinions of just about everyone else, are going to lead that man to an early grave,” Howard said, “And let me tell you—”

 _Maria_ , Tony’s mind supplied.

“—Esme, no one would deserve it more than—“

 _Our son, Tony_!

“Moses!”

Wait, what?

Tony stared up at him. Today’s suit was new and immaculate and came with a purple pocket square that Howard somehow managed to display in an aggressively dapper and heterosexual manner. He had a magnificent, businesslike felt hat pulled low over his face. His hair was both immaculately arranged and somehow rakish. His moustache actually seemed to be taunting Tony.

Then he made it all the way down the stoop and literally _walked into_ Tony, and the nightmare was complete.

“Oh,” Howard said, “Tony. I’d completely forgotten about you.”

Well. That wasn’t shocking.

What was shocking was that Howard had knocked off his own hat, and underneath he was sporting a black eye that radiated out across his cheekbones. His temple matched the color of his pocket square.

“Huh. Someone knocked your face in,” Tony said, in tones of shock (and possibly glee. You know. Just maybe.)

Howard blinked at him. “You’ve got a shiner yourself,” he said.

“I’m not a responsible business owner,” Tony informed him.

This was true. No one had ever accused him of being _responsible_.

“Trust me,” Esme said, “Neither is Howard.”

Howard scowled at her. Tony decided that he liked her, kind of.

“We’d better go in anyway,” Esme said, “We’ve got to get Tony set up.” She held out her slim, perfect hand, and Tony figured that she wanted the references. He gave her both. Howard snagged one rather carelessly as they went up the stoop.

Tony rolled his eyes, purely on principle. The thing about this Howard was that, even if Tony hadn’t realized that this was the man who’d dominated and terrorized him all throughout his childhood, he still would have hated him. Something about Howard was eminently hate-able. Hell, he even hated Howard’s brownstone. It was more wallpapered than Steve’s apartment, had wainscoting on every wall and ridiculously ornate banisters on the stair, and the front room was dominated by a hideous Victorian fireplace with a giant mirror above it. There were also several oil paintings of dark-eyed, bewigged men scowling down at them, piles and piles of maroon carpet, and a truly offensive chandelier.

Esme had a desk in the front room. Tony felt pretty bad for her.

Howard settled on an overstuffed chaise lounge to read his reference. Tony took the seat furthest away from him, a straight-backed, ugly thing that probably dated back to the days of Steve’s prison ship martyrs.

There was silence for a minute.

“You live in a really ugly house,” Tony told Howard, for lack of anything else to say. Also because it was true. He’d never have suspected that Howard had a place like this tucked away. Howard’s tastes had always run to mid-century modern.

Howard wagged a finger at him. “I do not. Does this look like Park Avenue, Tony? I inherited the place from my Aunt Calpurnia. Beautiful woman; I’m sure I’ll name a daughter or two after her—”

Wow. Tony had dodged a bullet.

“—but I only kept it because of its proximity to the Navy Yard. It’s a kind of office; that’s all. No point setting up something bigger. There’s no action in Brooklyn these days.”

Then he went back to reading his reference. It was the very long one written by Mrs. Schevchenko, not the concise one written in Steve’s hand. It figured that Howard would go for that one.

“Well, I think this is in order,” Esme said, putting Steve’s reference down, “But we need to get your information.

“I may not have a Social Security number yet,” Tony told her. Social Security had only been a thing for like ten years, right? And there were totally people that weren’t in the system yet.

Esme stared at him. Howard chuckled.

“That teeny weeny bit of socialism?” he said, “Don’t worry, we can wrangle you around the tax system. In the first place because we probably won’t pay you that much. And in the second because if I like you I can help you get your assets overseas. And in the third because this Social Security business won’t last.”

“You wanna bet?” Tony said.

“Sure,” Howard said, looking delighted. He pulled out a checkbook.

“ _No_ ,” Esme said.

“What, I can’t bet my own employees?” Howard said.

“No!” said Esme, “And you can’t spend the whole night drinking with women you met at the mayor’s—”

“Says who?” Howard said stubbornly, pulling a flask out of his suit jacket with the hand that wasn’t holding the checkbook. He fumbled and dropped it. It popped open and stained the carpet.

“Oh my god,” Tony said. It all made sense now. The walking into people. The black eye. “You’re drunk.”

“—and you can’t get into fights with the Parks Commissioner!” Esme said.

“The Parks Commissioner?” said Tony.

“He’s certifiable,” Howard told him, “And he threw the first punch.”

“People want to hit you all the time, don’t they?” Tony said.

It wasn’t like he could blame them, really.

“You are never going to get that booth at next year’s Exposition now!” Esme said.

“Wanna bet?” Howard said, waving the checkbook in her direction.

Tony wanted to laugh. Really. But he couldn’t.

It should have been funny to see Howard go off the rails like this. Especially this Howard. Hotshot Howard. Howard in his prime. The guy people were really talking about when they insinuated that Tony wasn’t living up to his father’s name, because they definitely weren’t talking about the messed up alcoholic stick-in-the-mud sadsack who’d trusted Obadiah Stane with his weapons empire.

That Howard had already been pretty beaten down, though Tony hadn’t noticed it at the time. But this guy was so smooth and wealthy and shitty, deep down, really kind of careless with people and so _shitty_ , that you wanted to take him down yourself.

So it should have been funny. Only it was all too familiar, to Tony, to discover that actually this guy was kind of a fuckup.

Thankfully, they were interrupted by the arrival of McCoyle and a man in a smart Navy uniform.

“It’s time, Howard,” McCoyle said, “I’ve got the car down the street.”

“Great,” Howard said, standing up, “I will see you all next month. I’m off to Miami.”

“What?” Tony said. “What about the generators?”

Howard waved at the man in the Navy uniform. The man produced several rolls of paper. Unrolled, they were designs. Engineering designs. Of generators.

“See what you can do with these,” Howard said.

Nothing. These were pictures. They were useless.

Tony said, “I need a real generator. These are just—”

Howard leaned over Tony’s chair and put a hand on his arm. He smelled like very good whiskey. Tony felt the sudden and powerful urge to black out his other eye.

“Now, I’ve only known you twenty-four hours,” Howard said, “I have no idea what you’ll do with a real generator. Let’s let you work your way up. Give it a few months. I’m so sorry about your sister Perdita, by the way. No one could have predicted that runaway milk wagon.”

He patted Tony twice and was off with McCoyle.

A few _months_?

“I hate him,” Tony said slowly.

The Navy man coughed.

“Completely normal,” Esme said, “Now, where do you live?”

“Nowhere,” Tony said. Because he lived in the future, and now he couldn’t get back there, because of stupid fucking Howard, who was a complete shitstain, and it wasn’t even surprising because it was _genetic_.

“Alright, we’ll book you a room at a boarding house,” Esme said, “Next of kin?”

“Read the other reference. Dead by milk wagon,” Tony said.

If only. If only someone would run Howard over. Trust Howard to do this to him. Howard with his lifelong hypocrisy. Howard with his stupid moral lessons, suddenly personifying a fucking moral lesson, and one that Tony had already learned, at that. Howard, the living embodiment everything the universe had ever dangled in front of Tony and then snatched away without warning.

‘Tony Stark, your weapons empire is a credit to the ingenuity of mankind and a boon to us all. Except for how it isn’t.’

‘Your father was, at some point, maybe, a good man. No. Nevermind, he never was. Just kidding.’

‘You are going to see your Steve again, Tony. Ha. Only you aren’t. Not for a few months at least. Because we, the forces of the universe, are fucking with you.’

At this point, he wasn’t above ruling out the whole time travel thing being orchestrated by the same universal forces that had always messed with him. Tony was by and large whatever an agnostic became when they actually met gods and still didn’t really care, but this was getting so horrible that he couldn’t blame it on an accident of science. Science didn’t deserve the blame for Howard Stark-Raving-A-Fucking-Disappointment-to-All. There were a couple scientific ways of getting to the bottom of the time travel thing, but when Tony’s luck got like this?

That wasn’t science. That was life or the cosmos or a god fucking with him or something.

Only maybe not Thor. Thor wasn’t like that.

And, all these ruminations aside, he still had no idea what to do next. The cosmos was supposed to send you a sign or something, right?

“I know you just got in from the Midwest, but please tell me you’re familiar with Brooklyn,” Esme was saying, “Tours are usually booked this time of year and I guess I could do it on my day off, but I wanted to go to the Pratt art show.”

“The Pratt art show,” Tony said slowly.

“Mmmhmm,” Esme said, “They’re showing night student work this year, too.”

Tony said, to no one in particular, “Thor, this had better not be you.”

It really didn’t seem like Thor’s style, was the thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The park in this chapter is Fort Greene, which was originally Washington Park and which was even more originally the site of Fort Putnam. We US-ers lost the fort (and Brooklyn) to the British during the Battle of Long Island. They used the surrounding environs to house thousands of early patriots on prison ships. Something like 11,500 died (the 17,000 number is likely to be incorrect, though it's probably the number Steve was taught). Later some of those people were buried in the park. This was Brooklyn's first designated park. That's how Brooklyn rolls, I guess. 
> 
> I don't know why I feel you should know these facts; I just think that they'll come in handy if you're ever in the area with a fly hottie who looks kind of like RDJ, because you'll want to start off with the history so he doesn't think you just like the park because of the patriot ghosts. He might judge you if he thinks that. Unless he's Tony. Tony was probably way familiar with ghosts at a young age because Howard had a lot of them.
> 
> If you think Howard came off looking bad in this chapter then you should see New York City Parks Commissioner Robert Moses.


End file.
